The Nothing Planet
by TheAngelsHaveThePhoneBox
Summary: In a small corner of a broken world, hundreds of people's lives are in danger. They have ungodly horrors closing in on them, and to even attempt to help would be a suicide mission. But those are the Doctor's favourite. Episode 3 in a series.
1. Chapter 1

**(A.N.) To any new readers: this story is the third 'episode' in a series of Doctor Who stories, featuring my own original compaion, Ryan Murphy. The first two episodes, 'The Last Day' and 'The Thirteenth Floor', can be found in my profile. However, they're not required reading if you'd just like to enjoy a Doctor Who story.**

**To any returning readers: Hello! Its officially been one whole year since I started posting Episode 1, I can't believe I'm only on Episode 3. We'll be watching the 16th Doctor on TV before I get to episode 13! But I'm getting there, I promise.**

**Enjoy Episode 3!**

* * *

There was no wind anymore, Jessop noticed.

There should have been nothing but wind. The glittering skyscrapers that once stood guard against the gales had fallen months ago. Dismantled and sold for all they were worth. Now, Jessop stood on a barren and vacant wasteland. No impossible spires, no towering structures of human invention. Just land, as far as the eye could see. The only thing this planet had left.

There should have been wind. But there wasn't.

Jessop looked up at the sky, once blue and full of life, now purple as though it had been beaten. He set his eyes upon the sun, and knew he was looking at the reason why. That 'miracle' star was why there was no wind anymore. It was the cause of the tower's fall, the cause of the decrepit ground he walked on, the cause of all their suffering.

A snapping sound in the distance brought his attention back to the ground. It sounded like a foot standing on a long-dead twig, and had come from the other side of the clearing.

This was worrying. A quick head count told him that the rest of the men were all behind him, picking through the rubble in search of firewood. There were no other searches planned today, he was sure of it. So who had made the sound?

He took a few steps in the direction it had came from, scanning the leftover heaps of metal and scrap, looking for any sign of man and hoping to see the right sort. But after a few seconds and no strangers in sight, he put it down to a shifting slab of steel, and returned to hunt for anything he could take back to the compound and burn safely.

But then he heard something else. Someone running. A quick patter against the dirt that echoed across the landscape, like someone jumping from one hiding place to another. Jessop looked up again, paying special attention this time to a three-walled structure a few feet away from him - the remains of one of the hospital huts that had been set up right after their 'salvation' had came.

The sun was starting to set, a shadow falling behind the rotting wooden hut. Jessop walked forward slowly, eyes straining as he scanned the area around the hut. His hand rested on his newly-sharpened stake, lying in the holster around his waist. How he hoped he wouldn't have to draw it.

There was silence, and darkness, and then a pair of bleeding eyes stepped out of the shadows, staring across at Jessop.

"Alec!" Jessop called quickly. Behind him, Alec lifted his head out of a pile of broken transmat pods. "Nothing!"

Alec's dirt-stained face turned pale, and he quickly turned to the rest of the men, yelling, "Nothing! We've got Nothing!"

The others instantly pulled themselves away from their own searches, and turned their gazes towards Jessop, and the region behind him.

The bloody eyes had multiplied. There was more than one set of them. A lot more.

For a second both parties stared at each other. The men drew their stakes and held them out so they could be seen. The bleeding eyes studied them, decided to take the risk, and started running.

"They're coming!" said Jessop.

"Abandon search," said Alec, grabbing his men by the shoulders and pushing them back the way they came. "Return to the compound, now."

Jessop felt Alec's hands on his back, pushing him forward. They gathered up whatever findings they could carry and set off towards the compound, very aware that the other 'men' were running after them. Their scabbed feat pounded into the ground as they hurtled along, their gargled breath heaved in and out, their howls of rage rang through the air.

They reached the crudely constructed barbed wire fence. The men jumped over it and heaved the hatch open. Some of them flung themselves down the ladder and into the compound, others waited for the rest to reach them. Jessop and Alec were the last ones running. They could see the men waving them forward, but could hear their pursuers even louder.

Those scabby feat were too loud. Jessop knew they were right behind them. Even if he and Alec made it to the hatch, they wouldn't have enough time to raise the fence. But Jessop did the only thing he could, and kept running, not even stopping when the he saw already safe men clasp their hands over their mouths in despair.

Jessop finally reached them. He jumped over the fence and prepared to descend the ladder.

"We can't leave him!" said one of the others.

"We have to!" replied another.

Jessop turned back to see what they were talking about, and noticed for the first time that Alec hadn't followed. He was a few feet away from the fence, being ripped apart by Nothing.

Instinctively, Jessop dived forwards to try and help him, but felt the other men grabbed him back, and forced him down the hatch. He kicked and fought as they pushed him down the ladder, but they told him there was nothing they could do, and that was that.

They reached the compound, and the men told the guard to raise the fence. Jessop listened to the barbed wire barrier being pulled into the air, and after that he listened to the Nothing eating what was left of Alec. He didn't want to, of course, but it was the only thing to be heard. There was nothing to cover the sound.

There was no wind anymore.

* * *

**DOCTOR WHO**

**The Nothing Planet**

* * *

"See those stars there?"

"Where?"

"There!"

"Doctor, there's a billion stars in front of me, and they all look the same!"

The Doctor huffed. He closed the blue doors on the field of space they were looking out at, ran back up the stairs and glided across the glass floor until he came to the console. There, he shifted some levers and typed new co-ordinates. The TARDIS lurched slightly, forcing Ryan to grab onto the handrail to steady himself. The blown-glass crystal inside the central column rose and fall for a few seconds, and then the Doctor ran back over to him, and reopened the doors.

"_Those_ stars," said the Doctor.

The TARDIS had moved in for a closer look, and now, stretched out before Ryan, were about two dozen planets. They were impossibly massive and brightly colourful, like huge marbles lined up in space. Ryan could make out swirling skies and vast continents. It was, hands down, the most breathtaking thing he'd ever seen.

"Oh, _those_stars," he said meekly. "Now I see them, yeah."

The Doctor watched his reaction with glee, then gazed out at the planets as if he, too, were seeing them for the first time.

"This is the Vacant Alignment," he explained. "See, not all planets have life naturally growing on them. Some of them are just, well, there. And this is a whole row of planets that have no indigenous species, no native race. Just big, empty planets waiting for someone to call them home. So one day someone came along and terraformed them - "

"Terraform?" asked Ryan.

"The process of artificially changing a planet's atmosphere to make it hospitable enough to sustain life," the Doctor answered. "So, anyway, someone terraformed them all, claimed ownership, and then sold them off to anyone in need of new digs and willing to pay through the nose to get some!"

Ryan turned back to the stars, amazed. "People buy planets?"

"Yep. And that's not even the best part," he said, "Do you wanna know the best part?"

"What?"

"See this first planet," said the Doctor, leaning out of the box and pointing to the star the TARDIS was hovering above, which was the first planet in the row. "The race that bought that called it 'Ai', which means 'home' in their language. But when this planet was bought - " He pointed to the planet directly next to it. "The buyer decided he was a comic genius, and called it 'Bi'. And when someone bought the one next to that…"

Ryan gaped at him. "Tell me they didn't?"

The Doctor just smiled, pointed to the third planet in the line, and said, "Ci."

"Wow," said Ryan sarcastically.

"Yeah," the Doctor laughed. "They got all the way to 'M' before they realised it wasn't funny anymore." He himself pushed off the doorframe and looked at Ryan. "Anyway, I've never actually been to one of these planets, so since we're trying to do some 'first's, what do you say?"

Ryan only had one reservation:

"As long as we go to one not named alphabetically after it's neighbour."

Some more levers were pulled, the column rose and fell again, and suddenly Ryan found the Doctor gesturing to the doorway, waiting patiently for him to take that first step. Ryan glanced at the wooden doors. He reached out a hand, but hesitated. He turned to the Doctor, giving him a slightly overwhelmed look.

The Doctor laughed.

"I know," he said. "Don't worry. It's perfectly normal." He smiled, and gave Ryan a wink. "Go for it."

So Ryan did. He reached out, opened the doors, and stepped out onto alien soil. And what he saw made his face fall.

"…Doctor," he called. "I think you'd better come see this."

* * *

_End of Chapter One_

* * *

**(A.N.) Happy Halloween!**


	2. Chapter 2

**(A.N) Sorry to all who reviewed last chapter that I didn't reply to you. This website seems to be being very funny lately about letting me do Review Replies. I meant to send my thanks for reviewing as a PM, but decided to wait and see if the Review Reply feature started working again, after which I simply forgot. **

**Here's Chapter 2 to make up for it!**

* * *

This was not a dazzling world full of bright colours and wonderful new species. This, Ryan thought, was hell.

The sky was a horrid shade of purple. The ground was rough and without life. The whole place reminded Ryan of an Old West shanty town. There were crudely constructed, two storey buildings lined up next to each other, built from sickly-pale and rotting wood.

There were people dotted about, mostly in small groups huddled around numerous fires. Their clothes were filthy and tattered, and they didn't seem to care that a blue box had suddenly appeared in the middle of this makeshift-town square. They didn't seem to care about anything.

"Oh," said the Doctor, appearing in the doorway behind Ryan, and surveying their surroundings with similar concern. "Well. This is cheery."

"What happened here?" Ryan asked.

"No idea," replied the Doctor. "Never been here before. Could be a million things. War, famine, nuclear disaster, war again."

A few of the people around the fires glanced towards Ryan and the Doctor, but soon looked away miserably.

"It's funny," said Ryan, watching them. "When you think about other planets, you sort of imagine them as perfect, you know? Just assume that its only us humans that wreck our world with war and fighting."

The Doctor didn't seem to be paying attention. While Ryan gazed around the unbearable bleakness that was this planet they'd found, he was bouncing slightly on his heels, as if testing the ground beneath them. He licked his index finger and held it out in front of him.

"Shall we leave?" said Ryan suddenly.

"Leave?" the Doctor exclaimed. "_Leave?_ What good would that do, leaving? No, we're not leaving."

"Why not?" Ryan asked. "It's not like there's anything we can do."

"Well, no, not with that attitude we can't! Ooh, what's all this then?"

A wooden cart was making it's way into the town, though not, as Ryan half-suspected, drawn by a horse. There was a shimmering blue light underneath it, and it was giving off a low humming noise. It looked like a super-duper outer space hover-device, but in actuality it was only giving the cart enough power to trundle along pathetically. Nevertheless, everyone around the fires had turned at the humming noise, and began to whisper amongst themselves. The cart eventually came to a stop outside of the only one of the buildings to have men standing guard at the door. The people instantly crowded around the tiny man who was climbing out of the cart, and when the Doctor ran over too, Ryan reluctantly followed.

"Excuse me," the tiny man was saying. "Excuse me, please."

But no use. The people wouldn't let him past. They were all grabbing him, and asking questions. Loudest of all was a tall, rugged man who powerfully positioned himself in front.

"What's the news, Caleb?" he asked.

"I can't answer," said the tiny man, wiping the sweat from his balding head as he tried to push his way through.

"We have a right to know! Can we save them? Just tell us!"

"Get out of the way!" the tiny man cried.

Finally, the two men who were standing guard entered the fray, pushing the people aside. They people briefly fought back, but gave in when the tiny man was ushered inside and the doors swung closed.

The Doctor watched the tall man who'd been asking questions kick a piece of discarded scrap in frustration. He stepped towards him.

"Sorry," said the Doctor. "But… save who, exactly?"

The tall man looked at him strangely.

"What?" he said roughly.

"Save who?" the Doctor repeated, smiling pleasantly. "Who needs saving? I'm rather good at saving, I'd be happy to take a stab at it."

Without warning, the tall man lunged forward and seized the Doctor by the neck. He slammed him hard against the wall of the nearest building, which wobbled slightly in a way that sturdy construction should not.

"Do you think it funny?" the man snarled. "What's about to happen to those people? What's about to befall them?"

The Doctor coughed and spluttered in his own defence, until Ryan stepped forwards, hands raised in a calming gesture.

"Listen, he didn't mean it, alright? Look at him, he's an idiot. Why don't you just let him go."

The man glanced at Ryan, then back at the Doctor, whom he looked at with pure disgust. Then, he let the Doctor go. Ryan would have liked to think he'd talked sense into the man, but in truth it looked more as though the man simply decided the Doctor wasn't worth his energy. Energy, it looked like, he didn't have to spare. He struck Ryan as someone who might once have been healthy and athletic but now, like everyone else on this planet, he looked frail and gaunt. He gave Ryan an irritated look, and started to walk away.

"We're not from around here." Ryan called after him. "He wasn't trying to upset you. We really don't know what's happening. Who needs saving?"

"Don't be ridiculous!" the man spat. "How can you not be from around here?"

At Ryan's side, the Doctor caught his breath back. "We're sort of drifters." he wheezed. "We flitter about. Today, we've flittered over this way."

Realising they were telling the truth, a brief look of regret crossed the man's face. But it soon passed, and he was walking away again. This time, however, he continued speaking, which both Ryan and the Doctor took as an invitation to follow him.

"Why would you want to come here?" he said, kicking up a piece of the dirty ground as he walked. "This world is dead. No, worse than that. It should have died along time ago. But it didn't, and now it simply exists in a state of nothingness. Dead and yet not dead."

Ryan watched him gaze around his home like it was just as alien to him as it was to them. He held out his hand to the man.

"I'm Ryan and this is the Doctor."

The man shook it. "Dempsey," he grunted.

"I meant what I said before." said the Doctor. "I'm very good at saving people. I can help it. But first, I'm going to need you to tell me everything that happened here."

* * *

Dempsey led them to where they could talk in private. Four pieces of cloth strung together and covered by a wooden roof to create a space the size of a public toilet. It smelled like one too. Ryan found himself sincerely hoping this wasn't where Dempsey slept, but was too afraid to ask.

"It came out of nowhere." said Dempsey, when the three of them sat down on overturned crates. "There were no warning signs, nothing. One day they just told us. We were doomed."

"Doomed how?" asked the Doctor.

"Our sun. They said it was dying. It had reached the end of its life cycle prematurely. It was going to expand, and kill us all, and there was nothing we could do."

Ryan and the Doctor exchanged knowing glances. They'd heard something similar before, only then the speech was coming from a giant spider-slug.

"So what happened?" Ryan asked.

"Salvation came." said Dempsey, and then he laughed bitterly. "Or so we thought. They didn't tell us much, the government. Just that someone from far away had heard our cries for help and answered them. He had technology, they said. A machine. Something that could repair the sun."

"Repair the sun?" said the Doctor incredulously

"Ridiculous, I know. But what choice did we have? Our government told him to name his price."

"He wanted _money_?" said Ryan.

Dempsey nodded. "A lot of it. More than we had, everyone said. We tore down our world and sold the materials to other planets for whatever we could get. But they said even if everyone on this entire planet put up their entire life savings, which we did, there was still no possible way we could ever pay him the sum he wanted. Then, without explanation, the council said they had gathered enough. They paid the man, and our sun was saved. And for a few months, everything was fine. We were poorer than mud, of course, but we were alive."

"What happened?" asked the Doctor.

Dempsey looked away, misery hanging heavily around his eyes as he recalled. "Everything started to fall apart. First it was the weather. The wind went away, and the rain stopped falling. Crops and plant life died and the soil turned rotten. Even the sky drained away. It's like the whole planet just shrivelled up and turned sour, but was too weak to actually die. All across this world, whole stretches of land are just collapsing in on themselves, like the ground itself is just starting to crumble under the weight of us."

"I'm so sorry," said the Doctor.

"It gets worse," said Dempsey darkly.

"How could it possibly get worse?" asked Ryan.

Dempsey drew back one of the hangings, so that they could see out into the distance, where a pale sun hung silently above an empty horizon.

"There's a settlement, like this one," he told them. "On the other side of the world. Only now it's more like a prison. The ground is weak. The council think it will cave in any day now. Two hundred people live there, and they're all going to die."

"That's who need saving?" asked Ryan. "So why can't you save them? Get them out of there and bring them here?"

"Because we'd never make it to their settlement alive," replied Dempsey. "That man who was mobbed earlier, he's part of the council. They're watching the situation closely, as we all are. But we cannot get too close, or we might make our own settlement know to them."

Again, Ryan and the Doctor looked exchanged apprehensive looks, and though he knew he wouldn't like the answer, Ryan asked,

"…Known to who?"

Dempsey paused. Then, almost reluctantly, he spoke.

"There is an ungodly horror surrounding their camp. Relentless and unstoppable, and getting braver each day. If the settlement doesn't die by the ground beneath them giving way, it will only be because they've already been torn inside-out by these savages. As will we if we attempt to save them."

"But you have to try," said Ryan. He looked to the Doctor for support, but found him gazing at into the distance thoughtfully. Dempsey turned his tortured eyes on Ryan.

"My brother is in that camp. Don't you think if there was any way we could save them I would have done it by now. But there isn't. We can't reach them and they can't reach us. It would be a suicide mission to even try. Our only hope is that the council can find some sort of way to neutralise those terrible things before its too late."

"What sort of horror?" said the Doctor suddenly, leaning in towards the tall man. "What are they, Dempsey? Tell me."

Dempsey hesitated again.

"Nothing," he said, in a strangled voice. "They're nothing."

Before the Doctor and Ryan could question any further, sounds from outside drew their attention. Dempsey jumped from his seat and left the shelter, and Ryan and the Doctor weren't far behind.

Outside, there was again a crowd outside of the council building. Only this time they weren't fighting. Everyone seemed frozen in shock, some were weeping silently, others held their head in their hands in despair.

"What?" Dempsey shouted as he ran over to the crowd. "What's the news?" he asked.

"They just told us." said a woman, tears running down her face. "The compound, Dempsey. We can't save them. They're dead. They're going to die. There's nothing we can do."

Dempsey's jaw tightened, and his eyes closed in sorrow. While he was drawn into the crowd to be comforted by his people, Ryan turned to the Doctor expectantly, and was quietly ecstatic to see a determined and defiant expression falling across the Time Lord's face.

"Suicide mission, did he say?" he asked.

"Yep," said Ryan.

"Right. Well. That's lucky then, isn't it? Because they just so happen to be my favourite kind."

* * *

_End of Chapter 2_

* * *

**(A.N.) Happy Holidays, whichever one you choose to celebrate! :D**


	3. Chapter 3

"Repeat: Alec Elms, head search party leader, deceased. Murdered. Ripped apart in front of our eyes."

The voice crackled out of a rusty radio on a desk in the centre of the room. President Randolph sat behind the table with his head in his hands. The other council members in the room, one young and one old, watched him nervously.

"Did you hear that?" said the voice on the radio. "We all saw it. Thirty or forty of them, maybe more! They swarmed him, and they ate his flesh, and we all saw it. So don't you dare send us another telegram about these things not being real. Don't you dare call them noth - "

"Turn it off," said Randolph suddenly.

The youngest council member jumped to attention and unhooked the radio from the hastily constructed generator which fed it just enough power to broadcast.

"Well, that's it then," said Randolph. "God help them all, because we sure as hell can't."

The older man, Thames, approached the desk. "Mr President," he said. "We've know that for days now. I don't know why you continue to torture yourself by listening to their broadcasts."

Thames was a long time council member. Unlike his younger colleague, he had worked for decades in the old Serenity House, former home of the council before it was demolished and its marble walls sold away.

"There has to be something we're not seeing," said the younger man. His name was Oli. He had entered politics not long before their own sun turned on them and, given the many losses the government suffered in the following days and months, had found himself quickly promoted to a senior council member. "Maybe we should try thinking about it from a different angle? There might be a solution we've been missing."

Thames patronisingly cleared his throat.

"With all do respect, Oli," he said. "The President has thought about this from every '_angle_' possible."

"Indeed," said President Randolph bitterly. He stood up from his chair and walked around the room. "I've been thinking about this in my sleep. If we could just find some way to neutralise the - "

"Mr President," Thames interrupted again. "We have been over this and over this, and we have reached the same conclusion each time. These poor souls are a victim of circumstance. They are doomed, and nothing we do will help."

"Well," said a voice that none of the three men recognised. "Not with that attitude, no."

The Doctor gave Randolph, Thames and Oli a friendly wave as they quickly turned around to face him. Next to him, Ryan simply smiled politely, closing the door quietly behind him.

"Who the devil are you?" said Randolph in outrage. "And what are you doing here?"

"I'm the Doctor, this is Ryan, and we're here to turn those frowns upside down!"

"How did you get in here?" said Oli, eyeing the Doctor and Ryan and trying to work out if they were dangerous or not. "This is the Council building, and this is the President's office!"

"No offence," said Ryan. "But its not exactly Fort Knox. Unless Fort Knox was built out of plywood." He knocked lightly on the hollow wooden wall for effect.

"Anyway," said the Doctor, bounding over to the President's chair and sitting himself down in it. "It doesn't matter how we're here, all that matters is that we are here. Word on the street is, you've got a sticky situation, and we've come to help!"

"Hang on one minute!" said Randolph, gearing up for a Presidential rant.

"To help?" said Thames abruptly. "You say you've come to help?"

"Yes," said the Doctor brightly. "We heard about your situation, and came at once."

"Oh! Are you from the Shadow Proclamation?"

At Thames' words, Randolph gave him a quick and, Ryan thought, rather alarmed glance. The Doctor paused briefly, before smiling even brighter in response.

"Yes!" he exclaimed, delightedly. "That's exactly who we are!" He jumped to his feet and pulled out his psychic paper, which he presented to each of the three council members for inspection. "Look: Official Representatives of the Shadow Proclamation, Nerva Beacon Division."

"W-Well!" said the President, turning a bit flustered. "We must apologise for our outburst. Please, please, make yourselves comfortable."

"Thank you," said the Doctor, sitting back down. "But really, if you could just explain to us what the situation is, we'll get right to the saving."

"Well," said Randolph, stopping to look to Thames, who gave a reassuring nod. "First let me say, we're so relived you could come. We thought - I mean, we've been having trouble with our communication devices anyway - but we know the Shadow Proclamation is very busy at the moment, assisting the Quatral System in their defence against the Daleks, so the reason we didn't send a distress signal is because we really didn't think we'd get an answer. And we need to save all the power we can. You understand, of course?"

Ryan watched the Doctor stare strangely at the President for a second, then smile politely. "Of course. But as I said, if you could explain exactly what's happening, or even just point us in the right direction to the compound. Time is of the essence, as I'm sure you know better than us."

"Yes, of course," said Thames. "Give us a moment, and we'll find you a map."

He looked at the President carefully, and then they both left the room, with Oli following behind looking slightly out of the loop. The Doctor gazed at the door long after they'd passed through it.

"Strange. This planet didn't seem very big when we saw it from the outside, did it?"

"How do you mean?" asked Ryan.

"Well, it must be a very big map if they need three council members to fetch it."

Ryan gave him a cautious glance. "What are you thinking?

"Lots of things," said the Doctor. "That REM are excellent. That I've never been to Disneyland. That you've been with me for around three days now and I haven't seen you brush your teeth. But mostly, that something about the President and his colleagues is distinctly fishy."

The Doctor looked down at the desk front of him, riffling through the piles of paper that sat on it, and searching through the drawers. Ryan followed suit, walking around the room and looking for anything suspicious.

"So then," he asked the Doctor. "Shadow Proclamation?"

"A sort of intergalactic police force," the Doctor answered from under the desk. "If your planet gets broken in to, they're the outer space equivalent of phoning 999."

Ryan laughed. "You know I don't know whether to believe half the things you say."

The Doctor's head popped up over the desk and he gave a great grin. "Good philosophy. I lie lots."

"What about the Daleks?"

The grin fell away. "Long story. Scary story. I'll tell you about it some time, or you'll find out first hand more likely. We're due a run-in."

Before Ryan could press any further, the Doctor jumped to his feet and gazed at him.

"Ryan your house is on fire."

"…What?"

"Your house, it's on fire. Your Mother and Father are trapped inside, they're going to die." Seeing Ryan's face light up in alarm, the Doctor quickly added, "I'm speaking hypothetically of course."

Ryan's mouth hung open in disbelief. The Doctor moved swiftly on.

"Anyway, the house down the street is also on fire. Err, again: hypothetically." Ryan glared at him. "Only the house down the street caught fire ten minutes before yours did, the Fire Brigade are already there. You can see them from outside your house, you can see they're busy trying to put the other fire out. Tell me, would that stop you from calling them for help?"

"No, of course not," said Ryan crossly. "My house is on fire too."

"Exactly," said the Doctor, turning again to the door the council members left through. "So why didn't they at least try and call the Shadow Proclamation."

"You don't think they're as desperate as they seem?"

"On the contrary," replied the Doctor mysteriously. "I think they're trying to appear less desperate."

He seemed to suddenly change his focus, as the Doctor often did at the drop of a hat, and grabbed the radio sitting on the President's desk. Flipping the switch, he was rewarded only with audio static, no matter how he tuned it.

"Something tells me they don't have the Top 40 around these parts," Ryan told him.

The Doctor shot him an unamused glance, before producing his sonic screwdriver and turning it towards the radio. It buzzed and whirred, but still the radio was only giving out static.

The door opened again and the President and his council members entered once more.

"Right," said the President, carrying a dusty roll of paper under his arm. "Be aware that our landscapehas been undergoing certain changes over the last few months, so this map may not be as accurate as it once… what are you doing?"

"Just scanning," said the Doctor, still focused on sonicing the radio. "Seeing if anyone else out there is in need."

Thames immediately crossed the room and turned the radio off. The Doctor looked up at him in puzzlement. Both Thames and Randolph now looked more uneasy than ever.

"Is there a problem?" asked the Doctor..

"No, no," said Thames. "It's just… well, as you said, time is of the essence. Mr President?"

President Randolph quickly unrolled the map and spread it out on the desk.

"Here," he said, pointing to the top corner of the map. "The colony is based in an old mining hub. But the ground all around it is unsafe." He gestured to the area around the compound. "Huge pieces of land have collapsed inwards, making it impossible for us to mount a rescue operation of our own, given our limited resources. You have a ship, I presume?"

"Of course. Big, impressive, galaxy-class space ship."

"Ha!" said Ryan in response. Though when he found the three council members staring at him, he cleared his throat awkwardly. "I mean, yeah, big, impressive ship. Not a tiny blue box or anything."

"They'll have a barbed wire fence around the entry hatch," said the President, getting back on-topic. "Their only source of protection."

"No worries," said the Doctor. "We'll float right over it."

"How many are you, exactly?" asked the President. "How many men has the Shadow Proclamation sent."

"Just the two of us, for now," the Doctor replied, getting to his feet and straightening his tweed jacket. "Backup's at the ready if we need it. But why would we, eh? We'll just shoot over there, load up the peeps, and fly right back. Easy-peasy, right?"

Thames and Randolph very blatantly didn't reply, and Oli simply looked at his down at his feet.

"Right then," said the Doctor, cutting through the uncomfortable silence. "We'll be off. Lots of saving to do."

He started to make his away around the President's table, but as he passed, he flipped the radio switch back on. This time, there was no static. Instead, a horrible, gargling, seething roar came crackling out of the radio. Thames, again, quickly shut it off.

Ryan and the Doctor gave them surprised looks.

"What the hell was that?" asked Ryan.

Thames smiled weakly, slapping the radio on its side. "Oh, this thing's on its last legs, I think. All it does is give us audio interference these days."

"That wasn't static!" said Ryan emphatically. "That was something screaming." He looked to the Doctor for help, but found him simply watching the President's and Randolph's reactions.

"No, really," said the President. "It was nothing."

* * *

"So I'm not going mental here, am I?" asked Ryan when they exited the council building and set off towards the TARDIS. "You heard that too, right?"

"Yes, I did," said the Doctor. "So did everyone in the room, no question."

"Something's not right here. With the council."

"True," said the Doctor. "But we can look into that later. Right now, those people are in danger, and they need our help."

They finally reached the TARDIS, right where they had left it, and entered inside. The Doctor quickly walked up the steps and over to the console, dragging the monitor around to face him. "Pass me the map?" Ryan handed him the map they'd be given, and the Doctor waved his sonic over it for a few seconds. The TARDIS gave off a low, toneless beeping, and the Doctor sighed sullenly. "No good. The terrain's too messed up, the old girl can't plot any co-ordinates. Right then, better open the doors.

Ryan frowned. "Why?"

"Because," said the Doctor, reaching deep into his jacket pocket and pulling out a large ball of string. "We'll have to do this the old-fashioned way."

It was ten or fifteen minutes later when - with his eyes stinging and watering from all of the smoke, and when the TARDIS jerked unexpectedly (again), and Ryan nearly fell to his death (again) - that something long forgotten came floating back to Ryan.

"…Doctor?" he asked in an unsteady voice, clinging to the map with one hand, to

the side of the TARDIS doorframe with the other.

"Yes?" came the reply, over the noise of the TARDIS engines going into overdrive.

"Remember when we first met? When you crashed he TARDIS into the field by my house, and it was all on-fire and smoky and stuff? And you said it was more of a trans-dimensional ship, and not one that was really supposed to fly?"

"…yes?"

"Well, I suppose my central point is, if that is indeed the case, _why are we making it fly?_"

A piece of the console exploded. The Doctor dived to the floor, but quickly got back to his feet when he realised that, as the TARDIS was leaning to its side while in-flight, he had started to slide along the glass floor, where he would have flew down the stairs, hit Ryan, and they both would have tumbled out of the doors, and fell some 2000 feet to the crumbling, desert-like surface of this planet they were flying over.

Back on his feet, he gave a tug on the piece of string tied around his hand, which he'd carefully ran around the console so that he could pull in a certain way and press all the controls and levers he needed, without the other five pilots this ship technically required.

"How are we looking?" he called to Ryan.

"You haven't answered my question!"

"Oh, shut up. How are we looking?"

Ryan let out a frustrated growl, and tried to straighten out the map against the force of the wind. "Right. I think that mountain we just nearly crashed into is this one on the map, which means we're going too far off to the right."

"We're what?" the Doctor shouted over the commotion.

"We're going too far off to the right!"

"Who wants Anton Chekov a fight?"

"_Turn left!_" Ryan yelled.

"Alright, alright, no need to shout."

Ryan muttered something under his breath.

"Oi!" said the Doctor. "Watch your language or I'll turn this TARDIS around, young man."

"Oh, _that _you heard!"

The Doctor's retort was cut off by another piece of the TARDIS console flying into the air with a spray of sparks.

"Ow!" cried the Doctor. He held the point on his cheek were a spark had burnt him, then patted the console lovingly. "Come on, now. There's no need for all this. Just a little big longer, hang on. How's it looking, Ryan?"

Again, Ryan switched gazes between the map and his view out of the TARDIS doors, trying to pin-point their location as best he could. However, it was at that moment that the TARDIS chose to jerk violently, and in shock Ryan lost his grasp on the map. It fluttered about in his face for a second, as if cruelly, then flew out of the ship and out of sight.

"Ryan?" the Doctor repeated.

"Errr…" Ryan replied, knowing he'd just lost their only hope at finding the compound and looking for the best way to put it. And while he was deliberating, he saw it. "There! Doctor, I think I see it. Look, barbed wire fence, and there's all craters and holes in the ground next to it, like the ground's just fallen through."

"That's our compound!" said the Doctor triumphantly. "Right, then, let's put this baby on the ground."

He clamped the piece of string between his teeth and pulled with his head, as he needed both of his arms to see to other bits of the controls. Ryan nearly fell to his death for the seventh time in as many minutes as the TARDIS began to lean backwards and begin it's descent. He gripped the doorframe tightly and held on, watching with wide-eyes as the broken ground and the barbed wire fence got closer and closer.

"Doctor, aren't we going to slow or anything?"

"What?" shouted the Doctor.

"I said aren't we going to _slow down_?"

The Doctor looked at him, noticing the rapidly approaching terrain behind him for the first time.

"Ah. Yes, that's probably a good idea." He raced around the console searching for a button, only to find it slightly indisposed. "…Oh."

Ryan didn't like the sound of that. "What do you mean, _'Oh'_?"

"Nothing. It's just that the button that does the slow-y down-y stuff is sort of… on fire, slightly, a little bit."

"So what do we do?"

"Errr… well, crash, I suppose."

"_What?_" Ryan cried.

"Calm down!" said the Doctor, whilst looking thoroughly uncalm himself.

The TARDIS had started to shake violently now. They were plummeting towards the ground, and the wind and the engines were combining to make that '_neeeooowwwn_' sound that planes usually made before they crashed into a ball of flames.

"Doctor, there must be something you can do?" said a terrified Ryan.

The Doctor tried prodding at the slow-y down-y button repeatedly, with small yelps each time the flames burnt his finger.

"Nope," he told Ryan. "No good. There's nothing else for it, time for crash protocol."

Ryan racked his brain, but found nothing. "You never showed me any crash protocol!"

"Well," said the Doctor. "Basically, it looks a little something like this."

And he dived over the railings that surrounded the TARDIS console, falling to shelter beneath the glass platform.

"Yyyyaaaaahhhhhhh!" Ryan screamed, slamming the doors closed in front of him and running for cover under the staircase to his right.

In the past few months, this world had received it's fair share of bumps and collisions, and this was as big as any of them. The TARDIS hit the ground in an explosion of dust and debris, and the unsteady terrain in this part of the planet became even weaker.

Inside the TARDIS, Ryan had remained in his foetal position under the stairs, shaking slightly and still in a state of shock. Gradually, he heard noises from underneath the console, and decided to crawl out of his own hiding place.

He stumbled out from under the stairs, and looked to the console, where he saw the Doctor climbing back up onto the platform - dishevelled but alive.

"Are you alright?" asked the Doctor urgently. "Anything broken?"

"No," said Ryan, though very quietly. His voice hadn't quite recovered yet. "I'm… I'm fine."

"Just tell me, tell me what's wrong and I'll fix it," the Doctor said.

"I'm fine, honestly," said Ryan, leaning against the wooden doors to support his unsteady legs

"Oh my goodness, look at you!" said the Doctor. "Don't you worry, I'll fix you right up, I promise."

"Doctor!" said Ryan, louder this time. "Really, I'm fi…"

He stopped when he turned around to face the Doctor, only to find him stroking the TARDIS's central column softly.

"There, there, old girl," he said tenderly. "You'll be fine."

Ryan just stared at him. It was a full minute before the Doctor noticed him.

"Oh. Ryan." he said, surprised. "There you are. All in one piece?"

Ryan continued to gaze at him for a second, then turned and walked out of the TARDIS, shaking his head.

Once outside, the Doctor again turned his attention to his beloved ship, wiping some of the debris off the doors with a handkerchief.

"Don't you have seatbelts or anything?" asked Ryan sullenly.

"Yes," replied the Doctor. "I really must get around to installing them one of these days. Ah, look!" he pointed to the barbed wire fence a few feet away, which was slowly falling to the floor. The hatch it protected opened, and a group of men climbed out, signalling to the Doctor and Ryan. "A welcoming party. That's always nice."

"No, it isn't," said Ryan, looking in the opposite direction to the compound, where he'd heard footsteps.

"Oh, come on. Look at them, they look friendly enough, and we're here to save their lives, what's not nice about that."

"No," said Ryan. "that welcoming party is nice. This one…" he pointed to where he was looking. In the distance, there was another group of men, only these ones looked far more foreboding, seeming to be hunched over like apes and breathing heavily. "…not so much."

* * *

_End of chapter three._


	4. Chapter 4

**(A.N.) Two months without an update? Bleerrgh! Back on the horse! Chapter 4:**

* * *

"The president said all the survivors were holed up in the compound," said Ryan.

"So who are _they_?" replied the Doctor, finishing Ryan's thought.

They were standing between two groups of men. The closest were a band of about five who had climbed out of the hatch that the barbed wire fence protected and, like everyone else they'd met since landing on this troubled world, were thin and pale, clothed in many layers of ripped and tattered rags for warmth. These men, whilst looking very surprised to see strangers out in the open, were still motioning for Ryan and the Doctor to come towards them as quickly as possible.

The other group were far greater in number. Ryan counted at least a dozen of them, but they were too far away for him to be sure. Unlike those that had risen from the hatch, these men were not calling out to the Doctor and Ryan. In fact, it was impossible to tell what their emotions were: both the distance and the sun shining in Ryan's and the Doctor's eyes made it hard to make their facial features out. But something about their posture seemed very off to Ryan. They backs were arched forward ever so slightly, and he couldn't shake the word 'wild' from his mind.

"Doctor," he said.

"Yes," the Doctor replied. "Something's wrong, I know. If we could just get a closer look. Ooh, hang on."

He turned to the TARDIS excitedly, placing his palm upon the side of the box and, to Ryan's bemusement, started feeling around for something in the wood. Then he lightly banged on the side of the box with his fist, and seemed surprised when nothing happened.

"What are you doing?" asked Ryan.

"There should be a periscope here," said the Doctor, banging on the wood again and looking at the spot with a frown. "It's supposed to pop out when you knock!"

Not to be denied, the Doctor started to knock repeatedly on the TARDIS, again and again and all to no avail. While he did this, Ryan looked back at the men who had climbed out of the hatch. They were beckoning frantically now, pointing at the other group and trying desperately to convey something that was being lost across the gap that separated them.

"Doctor," he said. "I don't know who those other people are, but the guys from the compound clearly don't think we should be this close to them."

"Come on, come on," the Doctor whined, still banging on the TARDIS. "I just want to get a look."

Ryan heard footsteps. The strange men had moved a few careful inches towards them, almost as though testing Ryan and the Doctor's reaction.

"Doctor, I _really_ think we should go," said Ryan, feeling a pinch of fear now.

"Just one second," he said stubbornly, bending slightly so he could look closely at the spot where the periscope was supposed to pop out from. "It's been a long time since I used this thing, it's probably just stuck."

The strange men had taken another step forwards, seeing Ryan and the Doctor make no attempt to move, which unsettled Ryan even further.

"No, really though," he pleaded with the Doctor. "Come on!"

"Just give me a second!" the Doctor insisted.

"Doctor, for God's sake," Ryan snapped. "Whatever it is, it's broken. It doesn't work, so just leave it!"

To illustrate his point, Ryan leaned over the Doctor and whacked the side of the box. _BANG! _A folded up periscope shot out of the wood and smacked the Doctor in the face.

"_Ohhh_!" the Doctor wailed, hands flying to his nose. "Oh my… Silurians-on-a-stick, that hurt!"

"I'm sorry!" said Ryan quickly. "Oh, Doctor, I'm so… I didn't even think there was anything in there, honestly, I - _whoa_, that's a lot of blood!"

The Doctor looked at him, with wide eyes and a tidal wave of blood flowing from his nose. "Am I bleeding? Really?"

"Err, just a bit," Ryan lied. "It's nothing, it's a scratch. Look, we should get moving, 'cos those people… uh-oh."

"What?" said the Doctor. He turned towards the group of strangers whilst simultaneously tilting his head back to try and stop the heavy flow of blood coming from his nose. "What's happening? I can't see!"

"They're running," said Ryan, nodding towards the men in the shadows. At the sight of blood, they had dropped all pretences and started sprinting in their direction. "They're coming right for us."

"What do they look like?" asked the Doctor.

As the wild men quickly closed the distance between them, Ryan got a good look at them, and didn't quite know how to answer the Doctor's question.

They were bald, save for a few tufts of hair still hanging on to a head that was mostly made of scabs and open wounds; pieces of flesh had been ripped in places and then simply hung there afterwards. The skin was like this all over, from their fingers with only one or two nails left on them, right down to their bare feet which were pounding into the dirt as they raced towards the Doctor and Ryan. But worst of all was the eyes. Initially, Ryan though they were all wearing some sort of red mask above their nose, but then he realised it was actually blood. He could see no cuts or gashes around the eyes, no visible source. The blood seemed to just be seeping out of the eyelids, covering the entire eyeball and dripping down their faces.

"Zombies," said Ryan finally. "They look like zombies! And they also look very eager to meet us."

"Go," said the Doctor, giving up on his own wound and pushing Ryan towards the compound. "Run, now!"

They started running towards the compound, where the men waiting for them had drawn wooden stakes out of a holster around their waists, and were brandishing them like swords.

The zombie-men were fast. Ryan had initially thought that he and the Doctor had a good start on them, but all too soon he could hear a dozen scabby footsteps behind him, and a disturbing sound that was somewhere between a gargle and a wheeze. One or two were running on a limp leg, and if Ryan had looked closer he would have seen a broken bone peeking out of the thigh, which the creature ignored completely, choosing instead to drag the defective limb along behind them.

As they were running, Ryan saw the Doctor take a handkerchief from his pocket, rub it against his bloody nose, then toss it over his shoulder. If the zombies saw it, they paid it no mind. They continued barrelling towards their intended targets, with the grace of apes and the speed of lions.

The men at the compound could only watch anxiously, not even considering raising the fence and leaving Ryan and the Doctor to be devoured, and yet silently wondering if Ryan and the Doctor would make it to them in time for the fence to even be raised.

Fortunately, Ryan eventually jumped over the barbed wire as it lay on the floor, and came to a exhausted stop at the hatch.

"What's he doing?" one of the men asked him. It was only then that Ryan realised the Doctor wasn't next to him.

He was standing at the very edge of the fence, staring at the zombies as they still ran full force towards him.

"Doctor!" Ryan cried. "Come on!"

But the Doctor wouldn't be swayed. He was searching for something in those bleeding eyes. He was looking where they were looking. He saw his handkerchief on the floor behind them, forgotten.

Then, just as Ryan was about to run and get him, the Doctor turned and hopped over the barbed wire. As he ran towards Ryan, he pointed his sonic at the fence the barbed wire was attached to, which raised off the floor just in time for the zombie-men to collide with it. In horror, Ryan watched as the wire pierced into their skin. But there came no scream of pain. They simply pulled away, and the flesh tore from them as they did.

For a moment, the Doctor, Ryan and the other men just looked at the creatures.

"Will they make an attempt to scale the fence?" the Doctor asked.

"No," said another of the men. "They've learnt they won't survive the climb in one piece."

The Doctor nodded. "I think they're out of breath anyway." This drew Ryan's attention to one of the zombie-men's chest, where he could make out a cracked rib cage, peaking through a rip in the skin. He watched the man's lungs heaving in and out.

"Out of breath?" he asked. "Doctor, they should be out of life! How did they even manage running?"

The Doctor took a step towards the fence, and the men immediately held him back.

"Okay, mister," said one of them. His dirty face looked tired and troubled, and Ryan could tell he didn't have time for any of the Doctor's Doctor-ness. He placed a hand on the Doctor's shoulder and guided him towards the open hatch and the ladder inside it. "Enough excitement for today. Get inside."

After climbing down a very long ladder, Ryan's feet finally hit a concrete floor and he was standing under a dim light in a small room that used to be the entrance to the mining facility that the survivors had made their home. Instructions and warning signs for mine workers still hung on the wall, and directly opposite the ladder was what probably once was a reception, but in reality was a tiny compartment with a desk behind a window. Inside was a large man who was looking in alarm at the group who had come down the ladder. Whether he was alarmed about being cramped into an area far too small for his large frame, or alarmed about the unfamiliar faces in the Doctor and Ryan**,** was another matter entirely.

"What happened?" said the large man. "I didn't raise the fence, it just came up on its own."

"Sorry," said the Doctor, smiling brightly. "That was me. Listen, any chance of a towel? I've bumped my nose."

The man gave him a bemused nod, squeezed out of his office, and left the room through a heavy steel door.

"Right then," said the man who'd led them down the ladder. "Welcome to safety, or the closest thing to it. My name is Gallagher**,** and I suppose I'm in charge here."

"Suppose?" asked the Doctor, whilst looking around the room with interest.

"Well since my predecessor died violently, there was no official torch-passing ceremony**,**" said Gallagher dryly. "And no one had told me otherwise, so we'll just go with it."

The Doctor, again, merely smiled pleasantly. Gallagher didn't return it.

"This way," he said, and walked to the same door the large man had left through. Ryan and the Doctor shared a look, then followed.

The light in the first room had been dim, but past the steel door it was practically darkness. Ryan could only barely make out that they were walking down a long and dirty mineshaft. There was a tiny light bulb attached to the muddy wall every few feet, but the mobile phone in Ryan's pocket would have given off more light.

"The medical bay is just up here," said Gallagher as they walked through the 'corridors' of the compound. "Well, I say medical bay. It's a bench and a man who used to be surgeon back when hospitals still existed. But he'll see to your face."

"That's very kind, thank you," said the Doctor.

"Sleeping quarters are down there," said Gallagher, pointing to a left turn as they passed it. They mineshaft had turned into a maze of darkness now, with cut offs and turns in every direction. Ryan wondered how Gallagher knew where he was walking, especially in the absence of light. "We'll get you some blankets, but if all the beds are taken just set yourself down in whichever corner you like. We're making food last, so there's only one meal a day. And we'll bring it to you when its ready, so don't ask."

"Sorry," said Ryan politely. "I think there's been a mistake."

"Yes," said Gallagher, not even turning to look at Ryan as he spoke. "The sun died. Fairly big mistake, as they go, but we're making the best of it."

"No, you don't understand," said the Doctor, coming to a stop. "We won't be staying long. And neither will you."

Gallagher turned his filthy face to stare at them, weary and un-amused.

"I'm sorry?" he asked.

"We're not here to stay, Gallagher," said the Doctor. "We're here to save you."

* * *

"Ow," the Doctor flinched.

The former surgeon tending to the Doctor in the medical bay prodded again at his nose, eliciting a similar whimper from the Time Lord.

"It's not broken," said the surgeon, wiping the Doctor's blood off of his fingers with a rag. "Just keep pressure on it and you'll be fine."

"As fine as a mad man can be," said Gallagher, standing against the wall and glaring at the Doctor.

Ryan rolled his eyes as the surgeon excused himself.

"He's not mad, Gallgher," he said with a sigh. "Well, no. He _is_ mad. Completely off his head. Madder than a gunfight in a fireworks factory."

The Doctor smirked at his companion. "Nice**.**"

"Thanks," Ryan replied, then turned back to Gallagher. "But he is telling the truth."

"A little box," said Gallagher, repeating their own words. "Bigger on the inside than it is on the outside, that can magically jump from the surface down into the compound. And it's going to whisk all of us to safety? Forgive me if I find it hard to take you seriously."

"We were sent by the President himself," said the Doctor, his voice muffled by the surgeon's rag that he held against his nose.

"So you keep saying," Gallagher fired back. "But without proof, how can I believe you? We find you both, appearing out of nowhere, running around on unstable ground and playing chicken with a gang of hell-born carnivores. For all we know, you're a couple of nutcases that want to draw us out onto the surface so we can get torn to bits and you can watch!"

"Actually," said Ryan, raising a finger. "Sorry, just while we're on the subject of those hell-born carnivores…" He paused for effect, and looked to the Doctor. "…Zombies."

The Doctor nodded. "Yes."

Ryan stared at him expectantly. The Doctor stared back, and since Ryan felt his point hadn't been heard, he spoke again.

"Right, but… zombies!"

"I know," said the Doctor, nodding again.

Ryan shook his head, still unsatisfied with the Doctor's response.

"No, no," he said impatiently. "_Zombies_!"

"I know! I saw them, Ryan."

"Yeah, far closer than I would've liked!" Ryan cried angrily. "Look, I'm all for saving a load of stranded people, that's grand. But I did not sign up for zombies."

"Yes, you did," the Doctor countered. "The moment you stepped into my box."

"Well you should put _that_ on the front door, not directions on how to use the broken phone. And anyway, I'd expect it from you, you're a lunatic. But how did the President forget to mention the minor detail of _flesh-eating zombies!_"

Gallagher let out a derisive snort of laughter.

"You'll be waiting a long time for a warning from our dear President," he snarled.

"Why's that?" Ryan asked.

"Because he won't admit they exist**;** none of the council will."

Ryan and the Doctor shared another look, their inkling of suspicion regarding the council come bubbling up again.

"What are you talking about?" asked the Doctor, removing the rag so he could look at Gallagher properly. "How can they not admit they exist?"

"We don't know," said Gallagher truthfully. "They first appeared not long after we set up camp here. Men were sent out for firewood and never came back. They kept their distance at first, we could only get glimpses. We sent messages to the council and we were told we were imagining things. Then they started getting braver. Now we only go on one search a week because if the fence is down for too long they try their luck. We've sent descriptions, we've sent audio recordings of their howls. And still the council will not acknowledge them. 'Calm yourselves', they say. 'Ignore it. Your mind is playing tricks on you. It's nothing'. Well, nothing keeps coming back, and in greater number. The Nothing, as we call them, might be the end of us all."

There was small moment of silence, until the Doctor rose from the bench and met Gallagher's gaze.

"All the more reason to let us save you and never give them the chance."

Gallagher stared back. There was still contempt and distrust in his eyes, but it had been joined by a small glint indecision.

"The ground this compound sits in is not long for this world," the Doctor told him. "It's going to collapse and you have no idea of knowing when. Days, months, or ten minutes from this very conversation. But nobody here has to be crushed to death, and you certainly don't have to be eaten alive. We can save all of you."

Gallagher looked for a second to be hearing the Doctor's words, but then shook his head sadly. "I can't put the fate of everyone here into two people I don't even know if I can trust."

The Doctor opened his mouth to respond, but stopped. He looked up to the light that hung from the ceiling, which had started to swing to and fro; first only slightly but then with increasing speed. The walls started to tremble, the bench on which the Doctor had sat made a tappingnoise against the floor as it juddered, and small pieces of the ceiling began to break away and flitter to the floor. Then, as quick as it had started, the walls settled, and everything stopped. Ryan looked to Gallagher, who seemed unsurprised and un-alarmed at the mini-quake, leading him to guess this must be something that happened often.

There were voices from outside the door, as the people trapped inside the compound called out to each other to make sure they were alright. Gallagher heard this, so did Ryan. The Doctor, however, bent down and picked up some of what used to be the ceiling between his fingers.

"With the greatest of respect," he said, holding the debris up to show Gallagher. "I don't really think you have much choice."

* * *

_End of Chapter Four_


	5. Chapter 5

"Anyone else getting a Snow White vibe down here? All the little workers rushing about?" said the Doctor. He then began to whistle 'Heigh-Ho, it's off to work we go!' as he, Ryan and Gallagher made their way through the dark and dingy mine tunnels back towards the ladder that would take them to the surface and the TARDIS.

Gallagher, however, did not care for the Doctor's wit.

"Hey," he said, coming to a sudden halt and poking the Doctor in the chest with his index finger. "Let's get one thing straight: I still don't trust you, but I'm in charge of keeping these people safe and you're the only chance I have to do that. So this is how it's going to go: I'm going with you to get this box, so I can see it for myself and then decide whether I want your help or not." He then turned his finger on Ryan. "He stays here."

The Doctor smiled again, but this time it was void of humour

"No, he doesn't," he said plainly.

"Yes, he does," replied Gallagher. "He's collateral. You try anything funny up there, and we…

"If anyone lays a finger on him," said the Doctor, his synthetic smile falling away as he stepped towards Gallagher, "then the Nothing and the walls falling in around you will be the absolute least of your worries."

Gallagher didn't blink, instead getting right in the Doctor's face and matching his defiant stare.

"Think very carefully about what you're saying," he said through gritted teeth. "I've got absolutely nothing left in this world to lose, and that makes me a dangerous man to threaten."

Sensing an oncoming scuffle that he feared these crumbling walls couldn't withstand, Ryan chose this moment to force himself between the two men and lightly push them away from each other.

"Ooookay," he said merrily. "Let's all take a breather, eh? These walls are weak, remember? They might not take the testosterone you two are spewing out. Look, Doctor, it's fine. Ah, ah - " he held up his hands when the Doctor looked ready to argue. " - it's fine, honestly. Don't get me wrong, would love to go back up to the surface and risk having my lungs eaten out, but if it's what Gallagher wants, then I'll stay down here and wait to be rescued."

The Doctor nodded reluctantly and resumed his stare-off with Gallagher, but luckily Ryan broke the tense silence with another question.

"Before you go, though, can I have quick word - privately," he added with a glance to Gallagher.

Gallagher gave them a bored look, then turned his cheek and continued on his way to the hatch opening, leaving Ryan staring at the Doctor expectantly.

" …what?"

"Am I really going to have to bring it up?" said Ryan.

"Bring what up?" replied the Doctor, appearing perfectly clueless.

"The sun."

"The sun? What about the sun?"

"I've been on three trips with you and every one of them has involved the death or near-death of a sun. Are we looking at that as just coincidence?"

The Doctor shrugged evasively. "It could be."

"That's not what I asked," said Ryan.

"Well, it's all I can say at the moment," the Doctor replied. "Bigger things happening, Ryan."

He gave Ryan a small smile, but Ryan got his drift. This conversation was not going to take place in a darkened mineshaft.

"But good on you," he said, slapping Ryan on the arm and looking happy to have dodged the subject. "You're noticing things, that's good. Right, I'll be back in five minutes. Stay safe, don't do anything I wouldn't do."

He turned to walk the way Gallagher had a minute before, but Ryan reached out at the last second and grabbed his arm.

"Just one more thing," he said. "Before, when you said the moment I stepped in the TARDIS I signed up for zombies trying to kill me. You were just joking, right?"

The Doctor held his gaze, but said nothing. Then he smiled again.

"See you in a minute," was his curt reply.

Ryan didn't bother stopping him from walking away this time. He was gradually learning that any conversation of importance happened on the Doctor's terms, and the Doctor's terms only.

It was only after the Doctor was out of sight that Ryan wondered what he was supposed to do while they were gone. He turned and looked at his surroundings, and found himself standing at a crossroads; two tunnels running across each other meant he had four options available to him. Gallagher and the Doctor had walked down one to get to the ladder, and they'd come down another from the medical bay. The two other tunnels led to parts unknown.

The Doctor expected to be back in five minutes, but again, Ryan was learning that what the Doctor said and what actually happened were two entirely different things.

Prepared to potentially have a bit of time to waste, he decided to try his luck and headed left, walking slowly down the tunnel and trying to ignore how weak the floor beneath his feet felt. For the first five minutes he walked in silence, and was deliberating turning back when he finally heard voices and movements up ahead. After another minute or two, he came upon an open doorway spilling light out into the mineshaft. Approaching it and poking his head inside, he realised he'd found the sleeping quarters.

It was not a pretty sight.

While it was by far the largest room he'd seen so far in the compound, it was still not big enough to hold the amount of people he saw before him. There were about fifty rusted-metal camper beds in the centre of the room, where mostly women and children sat, covered in layers of grubby blankets for warmth. For anyone else not lucky enough to have an actual bed, there were makeshift ones covering every other spare inch of the room. The thing that most got Ryan, though, were the faces. Those not attempting to sleep were simply sitting there, miserable and despondent, and Ryan wondered if this is what they did all day and every day while waiting to either die or be saved. He found himself really hoping that the Doctor, for once, wouldn't take his time. These people needed to see the light of day, and fast.

Ryan took a step into the room, and saw a man sitting against the wall just to his right. He, even more so than the others, looked dejected. His head rested against the concrete he leaned against, and his brown eyes stared off into the distance.

Then, suddenly, he looked at Ryan.

"Oh," said Ryan, startled. "Hi. Err… I'm Ryan."

The man stared at him; blanky, almost as though looking through him. Then his gaze moved down to Ryan's clothes, most likely wondering why there were so clean and un-torn. But he evidently decided it didn't matter, because soon enough he was staring off into nowhere again.

Ryan watched him restlessly. The utter despair inside these walls was getting to him, and he felt compelled to try and inject even a slight bit of hope into someone.

"Hey," he said, sitting down next to the man. The brown eyes turned angry, sending a clear message that he wished to be left alone. A message Ryan ignored. "Listen. I know things are bad. Well, that's a bit of an understatement. Things are awful. Things are the worst they could possibly be. But don't worry. I've come here with someone. Someone unbelievable. And he's going to save you. He's going to save everyone."

The man's eyebrow quirked dubiously. Then, without a word, he shifted on the floor and turned his whole body away from Ryan. Ryan sighed sadly, and was about to leave the man be when a group of three other men walked over to them.

"Jessop," said one of them. It was the large, round man who had been stuck inside the small compartment when Ryan had first arrived at the compound. He was flanked by two other men, identically tall and identically bearded, and all three of them were holding a hardhat that had a light attached to it. "We're going down to check the crypt. Are you coming?"

The man next to Ryan - Jessop, apparently - did not reply.

"Come on, now, Jessop," said the large man, bending down to attempt to meet Jessop's gaze. "I know how you must feel. We all feel the same. But there's work to be done, and Alec wouldn't want you slumped here like a waste of space."

Jessop buried his head between his knees. The large man looked to the others, and gave a sad shake of his head.

"Come on, lads. Looks like we'll have to make do with three."

"Where are you going?" asked Ryan before they could leave.

"The crypt," the large man replied. "It was the deepest point of this mine. We're going to check the damage from the last quake. It's a four man job." He raised his voice so Jessop could hear, and gestured to the spare hard-hat in his hands. "We'd rather not go down there with just three. But if something's got to be done, it's got to be done."

They waited again for a response, but Jessop still refused to acknowledge anyone was even speaking to him. The men shared another look and began to walk away. Except, at the last second, for reasons he wasn't even aware of and instantly regretted, Ryan spoke up.

"I'll be your fourth man, if you like?"

* * *

"I'll be damned," said Gallagher. "A little blue box. You were telling the truth."

He turned away from the image of the TARDIS standing a few feet away from him, and looked to the Doctor, who he found on his knees and dragging a finger around mucky ground; the edge of one of many craters of collapsed land dotted around the compound.

"Yes, I do that sometimes. How about you, though, Gallagher? Are you telling the truth?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Not an accusation," the Doctor added hastily, bringing his finger up to his face and examining the dirt beneath his fingernail. "Just trying to lock down all the facts, see if we can't cook up some sense. You said the Nothing only appeared after your planet started to change?"

"Yes."

"No sign of them before - whatsoever? No strange discoveries of half-eaten men on the edge of the towns? No crazy people swearing they saw demons while riding in the night?"

Gallagher gave a very impatient sigh. "If something like this existed in our world, Doctor, I think we would have noticed."

The Doctor looked at him, trying to gauge if he was being sincere by his eyes. Then he looked away, standing up straight and turning instead to the barren horizon under the purple stained sky laid out before him.

"Then we have quite the conundrum on our hands," he said. "Everything about this planet has gone wrong. Your land, your atmosphere, your minerals. This environment makes it difficult for existing species to survive. There's no way a new form of life has been born out of this." He wiped his hands of the dirt from the floor.

"Give them a chance, and they'll prove how real they are," said Gallagher, casting a wary glance over their surroundings and placing a steady hand on the stake attached to his belt.

"Oh, they're very real," said the Doctor, strolling forwards calmly. "I've seen that for myself. My point is, whatever they are, they must've come from something that already lived on this world. At the very least, they're not your average zombies."

"How so?" asked Gallagher, as the Doctor walked to a certain spot and again crouched down.

This time, however, he picked something up and showed it to Gallagher.

"Zombies," he said, dangling his red-stained handkerchief in front of him, "are generally partial to a nice bit of blood."

* * *

As Ryan continued down a seemingly-never-ending slope, into a seemingly-never-ending-darkness, he promised himself that, should he actually see daylight again, he would find the Doctor and throttle him for infecting Ryan with his big mouth that led only to trouble.

The path to the crypt was narrow, steep and made primarily of muddy earth, with several wooden beams in place to hold the walls up in place. The four would-be miners walked in single file, with Ryan stuck in the middle. If there was another quake like earlier, he'd much rather be in the sleeping quarters than in this tight spot. He didn't like his chances of survival should the walls give in.

"How much further?" Ryan called to his new buddies.

"Not much. Stop asking," came the stern reply from one of the two men he'd been introduced to as 'the brothers', Han and Karl. He looked for any indication of which one had spoke, but all he could really make out was the beam of light coming from the torch on the hat he wore. Though the brothers were practically indistinguishable anyway, so it didn't really matter.

"Why do you keep your supplies in the lowest point of the compound?" Ryan asked grumpily.

"We'd love to trust everyone trapped here with us," said Brannagh behind him - the plump man from the hatch entrance. "But we've needed to make all our supplies last, and that means meals are not very big. Men have gone hungry, and desperate, and tried to find more than their share."

"So you moved it all down here?"

"Not the best location, all things considered," said another of the brothers, the one walking in front of Ryan. "Necessary, yes. But the crypt also happens to have the weakest foundations of any part of the compound."

Ryan looked down at his feet, where his trainers had to dig right into the ground to find a good base.

"Lovely," he murmured.

After a while, the slope levelled off, and the tunnel led them into a cave-like space that was home to about half a dozen boxes. The men gave these a brief glance, but soon turned their attention to the structural integrity of the room itself, checking for any signs of damage. Ryan, however, couldn't take his eyes off the boxes. Or rather, the lack thereof.

"This is it?" he asked. "This is all your supplies?"

"Yes," said a brother crossly. They were all well aware of the food situation, and didn't need reminding.

"But there are at least two hundred people up there! To feed all of them and make it last you'd have to give them a scrap of food a day."

Ryan felt two helmet-lights fall upon him, and he turned to see the Brothers glaring at him.

"Wow," he said quietly, gazing at the boxes. "You're lucky you're about to be saved."

"Right," laughed Brannagh dryly. "The man with the bloody nose is coming to save us. Can't wait." He looked to the brothers. "Anything, Han?"

"Not that I can see," replied Han.

"All fine here too," said Karl.

"Thank the skies," said Brannagh, already heading back up the tunnel. "Come on, lads. Let's get back."

Ryan gave another sad look to the boxes, and joined Han and Karl in following him. But he stopped just before he reached the tunnel.

"What is it?" asked Han irritably.

"Sshh." Ryan whispered. "Listen."

"Ryan we appreciate the help," said Brannagh, with growing annoyance, "but we really don't have time for games."

"_Ssh!_" Ryan insisted. "Don't you hear that?"

"No," said Karl, rolling his eyes despite it being too dark for anyone to actually see. Except then his ears caught a ghost of something too. "Wait - yes, I do!"

"What?" Han asked his brother. "What is it?"

"Like a… scratching sort of noise."

"Yeah!" Ryan agreed. "Coming from… above us."

* * *

"I still don't know if you're a lunatic or not."

"Oh, come on," said the Doctor, peeking around the TARDIS central column to look at Gallagher. "Bigger on the inside, just like I said. And I'm about to prove I can save everyone in your compound, also just like I said. Is there some reason in particular why you don't want to trust me? Is it the bowtie? Some people are threatened by the bowtie."

"It's not about the bowtie, or the box," said Gallagher. Though, as he gripped the handrail whilst walking up to the glass platform, he couldn't deny just standing inside this place was unnerving. "It's the way you talk. You analyse the Nothing based on their similarities to zombies, as if there's a science to them. As if they're as ordinary as dogs and cats."

"They are, in some places," the Doctor mused. "People who suffer unspeakable horrors. Things that push to them the very edge of death and yet not quite over the cliff. Every organ in their body stops running except for a tiny little spark of life, burning deep down inside. Relentlessly. And the only thing left that their brain understands is the need to keep living. They try and devour normal people in hopeless attempts to eat the life out of them. You say you've seen the Nothing do this? Eat people's flesh?"

"Yes," said Gallagher gravely, though he then altered, "Well, I've thankfully never seen the actual act."

The Doctor stopped walking around the console and looked at him.

"I've seen the remains," Gallagher assured him. "Seen what they left once they were full."

But the Doctor still seemed unconvinced.

"I'm not so sure you've seen what you think you've seen," he said, once again removing his bloody handkerchief from his jacket and examining it. "They seemed to run at the sight of my blood."

"Because they wanted to taste it!"

"Then why did they leave this?" he asked, holding up the hankie. "Not one of them fancied it? One of the slower ones at the back, who might not have had much left to feast on by the time they got to me?"

Gallagher looked at the hankie himself, briefly returning the Doctor's interest but losing it even quicker.

"Look, I don't care about why they didn't kill you, and another reason I don't know whether to trust you is because you seemingly care very much."

"It puzzles me, that's all," said the Doctor.

"Good for you, now if this box can save those people, let's save them. We don't have time to worry about why you aren't dead. But don't worry, after we're done in the compound, if you're still upset about it, I might be able to help you out with it."

The Doctor gave him a slight smirk, then moved back to the console. "As you wish, Gallagher. You might want to hold onto something."

Gallagher stood back and gripped the handrail again, while the Doctor inputted the co-ordinates for the compound and then promptly heaved back the lever to get the TARDIS moving. The engines groaned into life, and the glass ornament inside the central column began to rise and fall. But even Gallagher, experiencing his first TARDIS trip, could soon see something was wrong. The ornament began to rise less gracefully, almost hitching in it's path now and again. And the sound coming from within the console also began to experience trouble.

"What's happening?"

The Doctor fought his way over to the monitor, not an easy task during turbulence.

"Your stupid planet is too unstable," he said, looking at the readings. "My ship can't get a lock."

Gallagher watched him tend to the console frantically, sincerely hoping he wasn't just pressing random controls. However, after a few minutes of rough sailing, the TARDIS came to a gentle stop.

"Oh," said the Doctor. "We've landed."

"In the compound?"

"Nope. Too risky. The TARDIS has plucked us down on the nearest stretch of sturdy land."

"Which is where?"

"Well, I dunno, it's your planet." said the Doctor. He looked to the wooden doors curiously. "Let's find out."

He flew past Gallagher without another word, leaving Gallagher to follow him out of the box and grab him by the arm.

"That's enough," he said. "You gave your word that - "

"Gallagher, where are we?" asked the Doctor.

Gallagher looked for the first time to their new surroundings. The TARDIS had landed outside of a large, nondescript-lookingbuilding. A building not made of leftover scrap metal and planks of dirty wood - like every other building left on this world - but of dull, grey stone.

"I have no idea," answered Gallagher truthfully. He let go of the Doctor's arm and together they approached the building, where Gallagher laid a hand on the firm stone walls to ensure he wasn't seeing a mirage.

"You've never seen this building before?" asked the Doctor.

"Never," replied Gallagher, noticing the Doctor's attitude had turned sour the minute he'd laid eyes on the mysterious structure.

The Doctor walked around the side of the building, where there was a small black door with a heavy padlock hanging from it. The Doctor produced his sonic screwdriver and pointed it at the lock. It buzzed for a good thirty seconds before sparks finally erupted from the padlock, and it fell to the floor, broken. Instead of entering, the Doctor held up the sonic and inspected it.

"That took longer than usual," he said, so quietly Gallagher wondered if he was meant to hear. "There used to be a deadlock on this door. The power's faded over time, but someone was once very keen for this door to stay locked."

"Deadlocks were hard to come by, even before the sun went wrong," said Gallagher. "The only buildings needing that much protection were usually government ones."

The Doctor put his sonic back in his jacket and stared at the door again. He was very quiet, Gallagher noticed again. Going long stretches without speaking but with his eyes seemingly weighing up everything before them. In silence, he opened the door and went inside. He didn't ask Gallagher to follow, but he made sure to hold the door open as he passed through it.

Gallagher hesitated. He knew very well he should be ordering the Doctor to take the TARDIS straight to the compound to save his people, and that there was no time to inspect strange buildings. And yet everything about this place seemed wrong. All buildings of it's kind were destroyed months ago, their materials sold so that they could pay for their own salvation. Yet this one building still stood.

Against his better judgment, he found himself walking through the door.

Inside, he found the Doctor standing in the middle of a destroyed room. Every inch of it was black with ash, as though the building itself had been scorched from within. There may have been separate rooms once, he spotted bricks littering the floor to suggest that, but whatever used to be in this room had been burnt to cinders.

"People died in here," said the Doctor.

Gallagher's eyes shot up to him. "What?"

"Can't you feel it?" said the Doctor, gesturing around. "It's everywhere. People suffered here. They fought and they pleaded and they screamed, and then they died. And other people watched."

"How can you tell?" asked Gallagher incredulously, but even he couldn't shake the ominous vibe radiating from the scorched walls.

"This planet, what's it called?"

Gallagher stared at him. "How can you not know - "

"Just answer the question Gallagher," the Doctor snapped.

"Cantarr," said Gallagher.

"Where in space are we? What constellation do you belong to?"

"The Doberman Collision," answered Gallagher. "Doctor, what are you seeing here that I'm not?"

The Doctor didn't reply. He was biting his lip, staring intently at the ash and soot on the floor. The happy-go-luck, grinning idiot Gallagher was familiar with was nowhere to be seen. It his place was a man who looked to be on the edge of some sort of explosion, a man trying desperately to keep a sudden fury at bay.

"The Doberman Collision?" said the Doctor. "Not far from Alsalphus, if I'm not mistaken?"

"Alsalphus?"

"A cesspool of a planet," the Doctor spat. "A place where they mass produce consciousnesses to sell into the mood trade. They tear through living beings to scoop out their emotions, turn them into patches your can put on your skin. The man who saved your world with his magical sun-repairing machine. He wanted money, didn't he?"

Gallagher nodded. "Lots."

The Doctor dragged the toe of his boots along the filthy floor, gave a last, disgusted look at the walls in front of him, and turned to leave.

As he passed Gallagher, he said, "I think I've worked out how your government paid him."

Gallagher once more found himself following in the Doctor's wake, and this time he'd reached the end of his tether.

"Doctor!" he shouted once they were outside and the Doctor was marching back to the TARDIS. "What the hell is going on here? What was this building for? What have you worked out?"

"You don't want to know," said the Doctor harshly. "If you ever want to sleep again or trust in the decency of your fellow man, you _really_ don't want me to tell you."

Gallagher grabbed him by the arm again, roughly pulling him to a stop. They stared at each other again, both furious and both defiant, and Gallagher was just about to speak when the ground once again started to move.

The quake lasted all of twenty seconds, and from where they stood was hardly more than a tremor. But from the sounds they heard, the epicentre was off in the distance.

"The compound," said Gallagher suddenly.

"Ryan!" cried the Doctor.

* * *

"What _is _that?" asked Brannagh, as all four of them stood about the room, staring at the ceiling. But the lights on their helmets only illuminated muddy earth, with no sign of what was making the bizarre scratching noise coming from within.

"Maybe it's rats or something?" said Ryan.

"No," answered Karl darkly. "The rats died out, months ago."

"Maybe it's the ground shifting," said Han. "This whole room might be able to collapse."

"He's right," agreed Brannagh. "We need to get out of here. Grab whatever you can carry and let's go."

Ryan, Brannagh and Han turned their attention to the boxes of food before them, picking up what they could and moving back towards the tunnel. But Karl hadn't moved. He was still staring at the ceiling, gazing at it.

"Karl, come on," said his brother. "Let's go."

"That's not the ground moving," said Karl. "Something's in there. Something alive."

"Don't be ridiculous," said Brannagh.

"I'm telling you there's something up there!"

"Karl stop wasting time," said Han angrily.

"Okay, listen," Ryan cut in. "Karl, whatever it is, it doesn't matter. We need to get the food upstairs before we can do anything about it. If this food is lost then the whole compound is too."

Karl kept his gaze locked on the ceiling for a few seconds more, but then he sighed reluctantly and started to turn away.

"Okay," he said. "Sorry. You're ri - _ughk!_"

A scab-ridden hand shot out of the ceiling, grabbed Karl by the throat, and started to pull. Karl was lifted off his feet before Han and Brannagh darted forward and grabbed him around the waist, while Ryan clung to his legs. In between the yells of shock from Han and Brannagh and the grunts of pain from Karl, Ryan heard other noises. From his position close to the floor, Ryan saw bits of the earth falling to the ground, and when he looked up he saw that the hand clutching at Karl's throat wasn't alone. Half a dozen more had forced through the ceiling, and they were clawing blindingly at Han and Brannagh.

"Look out!" Ryan shouted. The two men looked up and recoiled in horror. "Come on, we've got to get him free!"

They grabbed onto Karl again and heaved with all their might, and slowly the grotesque, nail-less fingers lost their grip. Karl fell from it's grasp and all four fell to the floor with a heap. Except that pulling Karl free had also brought the hand that held him further through the ceiling, and looking up they found themselves face to face with a bloody eyed Nothing, who frothed at the mouth as he attempted to both reach out to grab them and pull the rest of his torso through the ceiling. Soon the owners of the other hands had begun to force themselves through also, each of them howling and gargling horribly.

"Up!" said Ryan, scrambling to his feet when the others simply sat there in shock. "Get up, run!"

The other three did as he said. They briefly made attempts to pick up the boxes of supplies, but once the first Nothing's feet hit the floor, they abandoned this plan entirely and hauled themselves up the narrow tunnel. Ryan was leading the way; he wanted to run faster than he'd ever ran in his life, but the uneven ground beneath his feet made that difficult. It was like those dreams he'd had of being chased yet feeling as if some invisible force was holding him back. He threw looks over his shoulder, but since he'd lost his helmet, and therefore his light, down in the crypt he saw only glimpses and shadows of the three men running behind him, and heard the insane shrieks of the Nothing following behind.

For one deluded second, he thought they'd be safe. He thought they'd have just enough of a lead to make it back up the tunnel and close the heavy steel door before the Nothing could get to them. But that hope went down in flames when he heard more screaming behind him - human screams.

"Han!" Karl cried.

Ryan and Brannagh stopped and turned around. Karl was running back down the tunnel, and Han was nowhere in sight. Brannagh ran after Karl, grabbing him by the shoulders and stopping him.

"No!" Karl was shouting.

"There's nothing we can do, Karl," Brannagh told him.

Ryan didn't understand. At least, not until he saw something just ahead of where they were standing. A light that kept flickering on and off. It was the light from Han's helmet, laying on the ground and pointing upwards, where it was being obscured every few seconds by the Nothing crowding around him, ripping at him, killing him.

Brannagh had hold of Karl again, this time pulling him by the waist. The narrow tunnel was flooded with Karl's wails for his brother, Brannagh's calls for Ryan to keep moving, and the sound of the Nothing viciously tearing pieces of Han in two. Brannagh was almost at the tunnel exit now, and Ryan could vaguely hear him desperately asking him to follow. The problem was that Ryan was stuck to the floor. It was that night on the field all over again, when he watched a horde of Anilines suck the life out of Crazy Harry, and much like that night he found his legs paralysed again.

Like a soldier coming out of shell shock, Ryan was all at once aware of the walls and ground shaking violently. Another quake had hit the compound. The flickering light from Han's helmet illuminated the bloody eyes of a Nothing, noticing him for the first time and making a lunge, and Ryan suddenly crashed back to Earth (or whatever planet this was) and bolted up the tunnel, where Brannagh was just heaving a distraught Karl through the doorway. Ryan jumped the last few feet, soaring over the threshold just as Brannagh flung the door closed and bolted it.

The bangs of the Nothing head-butting the steel door were lost to Ryan. He lay there on the floor, feeling it's quaking gradually slow to a stop, his face finally covered in mud like everyone else in this terrible hole, and listed to Karl weep for brother.

* * *

_End of Chapter 5_


	6. Chapter 6

The compound had descended into panic. The steel door that led to the now Nothing-infested crypt was right next to the sleeping quarters, and Karl's wails of despair had drawn attention. All it took was for one person to ask 'What's banging on the other side of that door?', see Brannagh's horrible poker face, and news spread: They now had murderous zombies above and below this supposedly safe-haven.

How long had they been there? How many of them? If they had infiltrated the crypt, couldn't they just as easily climb through the rest of the compound?

Ryan wandered through the mayhem; the crying children, the angry and frightened adults, the people trying to calm them down. His ears were still ringing with sounds of Han's skin tearing away, and now they were being attacked by two hundred voices all speaking at once. His vacant walk led him to the one person in the entire compound not panicking. Jessop was right where Ryan had left him - on the floor in the sleeping quarters with his head buried in his arms. Ryan dropped down next to him and assumed much the same position, mimicking Jessop's misery.

"So," croaked Jessop, and Ryan was surprised to see the man's bleary eyes looking at him. "Who did you see killed?"

He briefly wondered if that was supposed to be a joke, and nearly got very angry. But no, Jessop was being completely genuine. This was the world they lived in now, where sitting this way could mean only one thing.

"Han," replied Ryan, hearing own voice coming out strangled.

Jessop closed his eyes and shook his head. Ryan expected his next words to be 'I should have come with you," but that was not Jessop's epiphany.

"You were idiots to go."

This time, Ryan did get angry.

"We had to," he snapped.

"Why?" said Jessop. "To check if some boxes that won't get us to the end of the week were alright?"

Ryan just stared at him heatedly. He wanted to fire back, more than anything, but he really didn't have anything to fire back with.

"It doesn't matter, anyway," Jessop muttered, burying his head again. "They're going to get us all eventually."

He didn't talk again after that. The two of them sat in silence as things only got worse around them. Tempers were rising and fears were growing, and Ryan could do nothing but marvel at the situation he was in. He'd ran away with a mad man in a box, only now the mad man had vanished, and he was alone on a world a million miles from his own, about to be killed by zombies.

Barely an hour earlier, Ryan had sat here and told Jessop how the Doctor was going to save them. How the worst had come and gone, and now a marvellous stranger was going to use his amazing ship to fix everything. He didn't know if he believed that anymore. It seemed so fairytale. And this - mayhem, monsters and murder - this seemed too much for anyone to save them from. Was this how he was going to die?

"No," he said suddenly, and shot to his feet.

Without a second glance to Jessop, he stormed out of the sleeping quarters. He pushed his way through the dark tunnels, now crowded with compound dwellers demanding to be told what was going on. As things stood, there were three possible eventualities: the compound collapsing in on itself, the compound being overrun with zombies, or the compound being overrun by its own inhabitants, who were progressively getting more and more agitated. Ryan was not going to sit in this hole and wait to find out which one actually happened. He was going to go up through that hatch and find out where the bloody hell the Doctor had wandered off to. He was going to grab him and ask if, while he'd been taking his idle time getting the TARDIS down here, he realised what Ryan had gone through.

He burst into the hatch room and was just about to climb the ladder when he was stopped by a noise coming from behind him. There was a small, handheld radio in the tiny compartment where the guard had sat, and the audio static noise it had been giving off was interrupted by someone speaking on the other line.

"Hello?" said a voice impatiently, and it was one Ryan recognised. "Compound, this is Gallagher, come in. Somebody answer me!"

Ryan ran inside the compartment and grabbed the radio off the desk.

"Gallagher!"

"Who is that?" said Gallagher. "Where's Brannagh?"

"He's busy, this is Ryan. Is the Doctor with you?"

"Yes, he's - _oof_."

In the TARDIS, Gallagher found himself being pushed away from the console as the Doctor grabbed the speaker out of his hands.

"Ryan!" said the Doctor. "What's happening?"

Ryan stared at the radio in his hand, gripping it tightly until his knuckles turned white.

"Where - the _hell_ - are you?" he fumed. "You were supposed to be five minutes! You were supposed to save everyone down here!"

"I know, I'm sorry, we got sidetracked. But we're coming, right now, we're going to load everyone into the TARDIS and - "

"Well guess what, Doctor, you're too late. You can't save everyone anymore, because there's one less person down here than when you left."

There was a beat of silence in the TARDIS. Gallagher's face fell and he made a lunge for the speaker, but the Doctor struggled against him and held on to it.

"Ryan, what's happened?" he asked.

The words to describe what Ryan had witnessed wouldn't come. He slumped into the chair behind the desk and simply said, "Nothing."

The Doctor's eyes fluttered closed in anguish, and Gallagher clasped his hands to his head.

"They came through the ceiling in the crypt," said Ryan with great difficulty - he felt his emotions stretching to their brink as he spoke. "There were four of us down there checking the stocks. Only three came back."

"Who?" said Gallagher, looking to the Doctor but speaking loud enough for the radio to pick up.

"…Han," replied Ryan. "They just jumped on him. We couldn't stop it. We had to get out and bolt the door. It's holding, for now."

Gallagher collapsed into the armchair across from the console desolately.

"Ryan," said the Doctor gently. "What did they do to him?"

"What d'you think they did to him?" asked Ryan scornfully.

"No," said the Doctor. "I know, but… did they eat him? Did you see them eat him?"

Ryan gaped at the speaker in disbelief.

"_Did I what? _No! Of course I didn't - it's not like I stuck around to watch!"

"I know, I'm sorry," said the Doctor hastily. "I'm just ruling things out. You'd think the Nothing would be driven by a hunger for flesh, but it seems no one's ever actually seem them eat someone. I think there's something worse going on here."

"Well I heard, Doctor. I might not have seen, but I heard fine." Ryan rubbed his tired eyes with his free hand. "I can't stop hearing it."

"Ryan, I'm so sorry," said the Doctor again. "I should have been there, I know. But I'm coming now, and I need you to line everyone up so we can - "

"Aren't you listening?" Ryan burst out. "I heard them rip him apart! Actually, properly, digging in fingers and pulling! It was just like Crazy Harry all over again."

Gallagher watched the Doctor, and saw guilt seep into his features. The trauma of the youth in his care was blasting through the big, impressive spaceship, and the Doctor couldn't press a single switch or button that would make things right.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, Ryan, I really am."

"Yeah," said Ryan. "You said that that night on the field, as well."

The Doctor paused. That had stung.

"I know," he said. "I messed up that night, too. But I still made things right. _We_ made things right. I need your help, Ryan, just like I did that night."

But Ryan shook his head sadly.

"Doctor… I don't know if I trust you like I thought I did."

There was a long period of quiet on both ends of the radio. The Doctor gripped the side of the console, looking utterly powerless. Then he turned around and saw Gallagher, and it seemed to reboot him.

"Ryan, there are people still alive down there. For them, I need you to trust me. Just this once, and if it's the last time you ever do, then so be it. But please. I _need_ you to do this."

Ryan looked at the radio in his hands unsurely. He wiped away the one stray tear that had broken through, steadied himself, and stood up. A few minutes later, Brannagh was surrounded in the sleeping quarters by angry people demanding information, when Ryan marched up to him.

"Brannagh," he said sharply. "We need to get everyone ready to leave."

"What?" said Brannagh, holding up a hand to the person currently shouting in his face and glancing at Ryan. "I'm sorry, son, I'm busy here."

Ryan put his hands on Brannagh's shoulders and turned the man around to face him.

"Gallagher is on his way, with a ship that's going to take everyone away from here. We need to be ready when they come, and that means we have to tell everyone to gather their things and form a line."

"Have you gone mad? Where has Gallagher got a ship that big from? We need to discuss this!"

"And while we talk the Nothing will either find a way through that door or pull the same trick they did in the crypt and come through the ceiling."

Brannagh's eyes were drawn upwards briefly, and when they came back down, he'd changed his mind.

"Okay!" he shouted, turning back to the room at large. "Everyone, Gallagher is on his way here with a way out!" At Gallagher's name, the room seemed to perk up. "We're going to form an orderly line from here to the hatch, women and children first."

While the people began to gather up whatever belongings they had left, Brannagh shot Ryan a sceptical look.

"I hope you're right about this. How long will it take Gallagher to get here?"

Ryan laughed dryly.

"That's another story entirely."

* * *

There was a cloud of thick, black smoke coming from the TARDIS. A constant stream of it was filling up the room, despite both of the wooden doors being open as the blue box hurtled through the sky. Gallagher, holding onto the railing by the doors for dear life, couldn't help but bring attention to this.

"Doctor…"

"I know, I know!" said the ship's pilot. He was whizzing around the console with a piece of string, looking thoroughly not in control. "The actual act of flying is not really the old girl's forte."

"She looks like she's ready to explode!"

"She'll get us there, Gallagher," the Doctor assured him. "And she'll get your people to safety. Now, come on, you're my navigator. Navigate me!"

Gallagher bit his tongue and turned back to the doorway.

"Keep going, straight ahead. By the looks of the craters I'd say we're about three miles away."

As they soared through the sky, Gallagher couldn't help but notice small patches of land crumbling inwards to create fresh craters.

"The ground here looks ready to collapse. If it's the same by the compound, we really need to hurry."

He waited for a reply. None came. Gallagher caught the implication: the ground collapsing was not the Doctor's main concern.

"They can't climb through to the compound," he said, addressing the elephant in the console room. "I don't know how they got into the crypt, but the compound is beneath nearly a hundred feet of solid earth. They can't climb through that."

He hadn't phrased it as a question, yet still he waited for the Doctor to agree with him. He looked over his shoulder. The Doctor's jaw was clenched; he was focused on the task before him. But even over the TARDIS engines edging into overdrive, Gallagher heard him comment.

"Maybe they don't have to climb."

* * *

Brannagh's face was crinkled with cynicism. He paused in place on the ladder that led up to the hatch.

"A little wooden box?" he asked again.

"Blue, yeah," replied Ryan, standing at the foot of the ladder and looking up at him.

"But how can - "

"It doesn't matter how, you'll see when it gets here. Just shout me as soon you see it, and direct people towards it when we send them up."

Brannagh gave a hopeless shake of his head and continued up the ladder. Ryan took a breath. Appearing calm was getting harder. Almost as hard as getting adults to take orders from him. But they did, which seemed ludicrous to him. He was only seventeen years old, as his brain seemed to be stuck on. Only seventeen. Not from here, and probably really shouldn't be here.

But he was. He was walking through tight mineshafts filled with nervous refugees, huddled together and waiting to escape. He helped the men checking every room in the compound, ensuring that everyone was in line and ready to leave. And every now and then he couldn't help but look at the ceiling, wondering if zombies were about to break through it at any moment. On his way back to the entrance room, he saw Karl, who was helping get things organised. They shared a solemn look as Ryan passed.

Those next few minutes at the foot of the ladder; in the company of the people at the front of the line who he pretended weren't staring at him expectantly; waiting for word from above, were among the longest of Ryan's young life.

There was a deep tremble from above them, and for a split-second Ryan feared the worst. But then…

"It's here!" Brannagh's voice echoed down the ladder. "I don't believe my eyes - a little blue box! Nearly fell out of the sky, but it's here. And Gallagher too. Send them up!"

The evacuation began. Ryan, along with a few other volunteers, guided everyone up the ladder, helping those who were so malnourished they could barely walk let alone climb. Up above, the Doctor was rushing people inside the TARDIS and practically repeating the sentence: "Yes, yes, bigger on the inside, amazing, there's crumpets in the kitchen, down the hall to the left, help yourselves." Gallagher watched the perimeter, a hand on his stake ready to greet any unwanted visitors.

It took a while, an agonizingly long while for Ryan, but eventually the last man passed Ryan and climbed up the ladder, leaving only Ryan and the three men that had stayed behind to supervise things. The men insisted that Ryan go next, and this time he didn't argue. But he had barely climbed two rungs when Brannagh's voice bellowed down to them again.

"Wait! Someone's missing. Gallagher's been counting, he says we're one short!"

"That's impossible," said one of the men, but Ryan had already taken off out of the room.

He was flying through the dark mineshafts. He heard the others behind him and trusted them to check other rooms while he ran back to the sleeping quarters. He burst into the room, but found it deserted. He tipped beds and kicked over piles of blankets, but the room was empty. Gallagher must have miscounted, he concluded. He had to get the others and go.

Just as he ran out of the sleeping quarters, he heard something - the steady and unrelenting banging against the steel door of the crypt. Cautiously, he crept down the passageway, just to be sure.

There, sitting cross-legged in front of the door, was Jessop.

"Jessop!" said Ryan, running over to him. "What the hell are you doing here, we need to go!"

He didn't look at Ryan. His eyes were locked on the steel door, which was shaking worryingly under the force of the Nothing on the other side.

"Go where?" he replied hoarsely. "They found us here, they'll find us wherever else we go. There's no point."

Ryan hovered on the spot fretfully. They didn't have time for this.

"Jessop," he said firmly, crouching down to look at the man. "They'll get through that door eventually. They'll kill you. You can't just let that happen."

"We can't hide from them. We can't stop them."

"You have to try!"

"Why? Alec Elms was the bravest man I ever met and they ripped him up like paper."

"We'll take you away from them, I promise."

Jessop shook his head miserably.

"There's nowhere left for me. This world isn't the one I grew up on anymore. I have nothing left. My friends are dead, my brother is lost, probably dead."

Ryan was running out of ideas. Looking in Jessop's cold, empty eyes, he knew he could throw out every positive linethere was and it wouldn't change his mind. He almost gave up, when a spark lit up in his head.

"Brother?" he said. "His name isn't Dempsey is it?"

Jessop's eyes snapped up to him.

"How did…"

"Jessop, your brother's alive! Dempsey - tall, grizzled, friendly like a cactus? He's alive. I spoke to him this morning, I promise you. If you come with me right now, I'll take you to him. Otherwise, Dempsey will have another tragedy on his hands."

Ryan may have been imagining things, but it seemed like Jessop's pallid features regained some colour. He looked at the hand Ryan had held out to him, and he reached out and grabbed it. Ryan pulled him to his feet and together they started hurrying away from the door, which was still being pounded.

They were just about to turn the corner onto the next long mineshaft, when they heard a particularly loud _clang._ Not only was it louder than the rest of the constant bangs against the door, it also happened to be the last one. Ryan and Jessop shared a tense glance, before looking back to the door, which hung in limbo for a moment, forced from its hinges. Then, almost in slow motion, it fell forwards to the floor, sending up a cloud of dust in its wake. And when that dust cleared, the Nothing got a good look at their prey. The one in front opened its mouth, with a broken jaw barely hanging on by one side, and let a scream tear into the air.

"Run!" Ryan yelled, pushing Jessop forwards.

The Nothing piled out after them, but the half-dozen or so of them ended up pushing and crawling over each other out of the doorway. It gave Ryan and Jessop a short head start, but all too soon the zombies were on their feet and hurling themselves after them.

Ryan was flying around corners so fast he wasn't even sure if they were going the right way. But Jessop had not raised any concerns, and as long as they put distance between them and the Nothing, any direction would do.

The other men who had been looking for Jessop heard the commotion and were calling down the tunnels.

"Run!" Ryan shouted to them. "The Nothing are through, just go up the hatch, now!"

"We won't make it." Jessop was panting and sweating, and starting to tire. "They'll get us before we reach the hatch."

"Just keep running," Ryan ordered. "They don't strike me as the best climbers, so as long as we get to the ladder before them we'll - "

A scabbed hand shot out of the ceiling and made a grab for their heads.

They both cried out and ducked as they past. But just like in the crypt, the hand had brought friends. As they stumbled down the low, narrow mineshafts, with a horde of zombies close behind, Nothing-hands started to punch through the ceiling from everywhere and snatch at them.

Jessop was screaming, overcome with terror. Ryan gripped him by the elbow and shouted for him to keep running, but he was hard to hear over the sounds of the Nothing forcing their hands, then legs, then entire ripped and scarred bodies through the ceiling. A gang of six pursuers suddenly became an army.

Ryan's legs were turning to lead, his chest was stinging, his lungs gasping for more air than was available. He didn't know what was keeping him going, he should have collapsed a long time ago, but didn't.

"Keep going," he kept saying. He wasn't talking to Jessop anymore.

They were almost there. The door to the hatch room was in sight. He could see the ladder, see his escape to safety. Just a bit further.

A hand seized the back of his shirt. A Nothing had inched ahead of the pack, grabbed him and pulled him to the ground. Jessop stopped and tried to pull him up, but the Nothing was pinning his arms down. A foul, cut and charred face was leering over him, shrieking madly.

He kicked and kneed and Jessop punched and smacked. The Nothing struck back in retaliation. It flung Jessop against the wall and grabbed Ryan by the jaw, forcing him to look at its bleeding eyes as it pulled back a torn and decomposing hand above his head.

Ryan forced his jaw away, and found himself looking to the hatch room, to the ladder. They had come so close.

Then, to Ryan's astonishment, a body dropped down the ladder and landed on the floor in a heap. The Nothing holding him in place stopped and looked up at it, as did the others who were running to meet them.

Showing no sign of injury from the drop, the Doctor stood up straight. He drew his sonic screwdriver, and pointed it in the direction of the Nothing.

"Man holding strange object out in front of him threateningly," he said, "and you stop. Does that mean there's still some consciousness there? Something beyond the blind rage?"

The Nothing watched him, mouths hanging open and dripping with saliva. The Doctor walked out of the hatch room and into the mineshaft, slowly and with his screwdriver aimed at all of them.

"Can you even understand what I'm saying?" he asked. "Because we are not your prey, or your enemies, or your executioners."

Ryan didn't have a clue what he was talking about; but as he looked up at the Nothing, including the one still holding him against the floor, he knew only that the Doctor had somehow caught their attention. They gazed with wide eyes as he gradually crept down the tunnel towards them. Jessop was struggling to his feet, and the Doctor helped him up as he passed, then silently gestured for him to head towards the ladder.

"Slowly," he muttered. Jessop did as he was told, escaping up the ladder while the Nothing were still focused on the Doctor. "I know what happened to you. And I know who's responsible."

The Doctor stooped down to one knee when he reached Ryan. He lowered his sonic and met the gaze of the Nothing on top of Ryan.

"I've seen the buildings. I've seen where it happened."

Ryan watched in amazement as the Doctor ever so softly took hold of the wrists of the Nothing and lifted each of them away from Ryan. Freed, Ryan looked hesitantly at the Doctor looming over him. He gave Ryan a short nod without eye contact, and Ryan crawled out from under the zombie, half expecting to be dragged back by his neck any second.

"I can't even imagine going through something like that," said the Doctor. He gestured to Ryan like he had Jessop, but Ryan merely stepped back a few paces instead of leaving. "And to even come out of it still alive. I'm not surprised you're so angry, it must be the only thing you have left. All your other emotions must have burned -"

The Nothing in front of him shrieked suddenly. So did the other ones behind. First as though they had been struck, like it was cry of pain. But when they didn't stop shrieking, it turned nastier. They started stomping the ground and pounding the walls furiously. The Doctor stood up hastily, and held out his hands calmingly. But it was too late. Whatever hold the Doctor's words had cast over them had passed, and now they were turning wild again.

"Doctor," Ryan warned.

"It's okay, Ryan," said the Doctor steadily.

The Nothing that had been holding Ryan got to his feet. Its shoulders were physically shaking with uncontrollable wrath.

"Doctor I've had more experience with these things than you," Ryan told him. "They look angrier than ever, we have to go!"

The walls started to move again. But this time it felt different, and somehow Ryan and the Doctor could tell - the incident in the crypt, combined with the Nothing pushing through the ceiling and smashing their fists into the walls had finally done it. The compound was about to cave in.

When the Doctor still made no attempt to move, Ryan grabbed him roughly and dragged him backwards until he started running. The sudden movement made the Nothing snap, and they lunged after them as one. The Doctor slammed the door to the hatch room closed behind him, but it flew back open when he and Ryan were barely up the ladder. The Nothing swarmed the room and tried to climb over each other to catch them. The Doctor's ankles were scathed as he followed Ryan up, but the zombies lacked the bodily co-ordination to climb, and both he and Ryan ascended beyond their reach.

But they weren't out of the woods yet. Bits of earth were falling all around them, getting in their eyes onto the rungs they climbed up. The ladder vibrated against the wall it was nailed into, and more than once they nearly lost their footing in the race to get out of the compound while the compound still existed. Their view up the ladder at the open hatch was a shaky one, but finally Ryan heaved himself out of the hole and over on to the rough and trembling ground. He quickly staggered to his feet and pulled the Doctor out too, and together they dove for the TARDIS.

Once inside, the Doctor didn't even pause to catch a breath, instead pushing his way through the crowd of refugees until he got to the console. Ryan soon saw why. The minute the TARDIS rose off the ground, everything collapsed. The compound walls fell inwards, the ladder broke away and the hatch was covered over with earth.

Ryan watched it all from the TARDIS doorway, as the ship climbed higher into the air and away from danger. The Doctor came to his side, looking at him somberly. A few hours ago, Ryan might have thanked him for saving his life, or perhaps even asked if he was alright. What he said instead came out slightly resentful.

"How did they get through the ceiling?"

The Doctor turned his own gaze to the crumbling land below them.

"Easily," he replied. "They were buried right above it."

* * *

_End of Chapter 6_


	7. Chapter 7

**(A.N.) Last chapter of this episode! You'll find a preview of the next one at the end of the chapter. It'll be a two parter, and although I'll still in the middle of writing it, it's coming along very well. **

**I'll post it as soon as possible, but for now here's the end of Episode 3:**

* * *

Some of the people recognised the blue box materialising in their town square as the same one from that morning. Others didn't care, as they had not cared the first time. When the doors to the TARDIS opened, however, and one by one the lost souls of the damned compound stumbled out, the townspeople took notice.

Ryan was among the last of the near two hundred to disembark from the ship. Earlier, he'd created a vague picture of what was going to happen when the Doctor saved the day. Fresh from a daring rescue mission, all there would be left to do was take the compound-dwellers, saved from death's clutches, and reunite them with their people. He and the Doctor would have watched with satisfaction from the TARDIS doors, before flying away, off to the next adventure.

The moment was happening in front of him. With the cursed sun setting behind them, people were pushing through the crowd around the TARDIS until they cried with joy upon seeing the long-lost family member they thought they'd never lay eyes upon again. He saw Dempsey emerge from his tent and catch sight of his brother. The two of them staggered towards each other in disbelief until finally running into an emotional embrace.

There were cries of joy and sob filled hugs. Ryan felt a firm hand fall on his shoulder, and he turned to see a teary-eyed Gallagher surveying the scene.

"I don't know who you are," he said to Ryan. "Either of you. Or where you come from. But thank you."

Ryan nodded silently in response as Gallagher walked forwards, where he was welcomed into the crowd amid jubilant calls of his name. The scene was exactly as he had pictured it, except for those who had done the saving.

He was covered in dirt and scrapes, and cradling his left elbow which was swollen painfully. He watched the blissful homecoming happening before him, not with an immense feeling of satisfaction and achievement, but with an emotionless expression clouding his face. His whole body ached, like it had never been so worn out in all his life. And his fatigue was only outweighed by the anger brewing dangerously in the pit of his stomach, just waiting to erupt.

On that thought, he looked around. He had not seen the Doctor leave the TARDIS, yet he was not amongst the crowd of townspeople, and a quick glance inside the TARDIS proved he wasn't in there either. A door slammed somewhere outside the celebrations, and Ryan saw the wooden walls of the council building shaking slightly.

* * *

"A flying box?" President Randolph exclaimed from behind his desk.

"That's what it says," said Thames with a giant smile.

He was reading information coming from a rickety fax machine in the corner of the room, from which government observers were relaying the rescue of the compound they'd watched from a safe distance.

"How many have we saved?" asked Randolph.

"They guessed around two hundred," said Thames.

"That's nearly all of them!" Oli enthused from his point in the centre of the room.

The three of them fell into a chorus gleeful laughter, and Randolph rubbed his temples in exhaustion.

"Oh, I may finally be able to sleep tonight. I almost can't believe it."

There was a beeping noise, and more paper slowly churned out. They all looked to it eagerly, but when Thames tore it off and looked at it, his smile fell away.

"What?" asked Randolph. "What news?"

"No," said Thames, shaking his head dumbly. "It's not from the observers. It's an automatic alarm - I didn't even think those were still running… it says…" He looked to the President. "One of the locks had been broken."

The room turned silent. Randolph and Thames stared at each other, each with an identical expression of confusion and dread on their faces. Oli looked between the two, frowning at the sudden drop in mood.

"Locks?" he asked. "What locks?"

Randolph rose from his chair and strode over to Thames, where he took the fax and read it for himself. His eyes crawled over the single sentence again and again, hoping he was reading it wrong. When the reality settled in, he looked to Thames anxiously.

"We need to go," he said

"If someone has found them, we can't be seen there," replied Thames in a hushed tone, while Oli watched them bewilderedly.

"It a lock has been broken," said Randolph, "someone might be inside. We _have_ to go."

Thames was about to argue, Randolph was about to cut him off, and Oli was about to ask what the devil they were whispering about. However, neither of them were the next person to speak.

"A lock? What's so special about a broken lock?"

The three council members looked to the doorway of the office. They had not seen the intruder enter, nor had they noticed him lurking in the shadows. The sun was starting to set outside the window, casting one last line of deep red light across the entrance to the room, which the man stepped into, revealing his face.

"Hello again, council members," said the Doctor.

Randolph and Thames stared at him. The Doctor was not smiling brightly like he had been earlier, not bouncing around the room or sitting himself down in the President's chair. He just stood there, arms held behind his back and a cool indifferent look upon his face.

"Doctor," said Oli happily, a tone that seemed alien given the current atmosphere. "You did it!"

The Doctor nodded.

"Yep. Everyone from the compound is safe. They're all outside. Your people, Mr President, await you. Surely welcoming home two hundred prodigal sons is more important than investigating a broken lock. Isn't it?"

Randolph studied him. There was nothing threatening about the Doctor's demeanour. He didn't seem to be baiting or implying. There was a remarkable calmness about him, and so Randolph hastily nodded his head.

"Yes, of course, Doctor. You're right. Thames, Oli, let's go join the celebration. It's been too long since there's been cause for one."

The Doctor stood aside for them to pass him, walking to the centre of the room and waiting till they were just at the doors to speak.

"I'd be happy to replace it, if you'd like."

Thames and Randolph stopped in their tracks.

"I'm sorry?" said the President, turning back to the Doctor.

"The lock," the Doctor clarified. "If you need a new one for your ovens, I'd be happy to foot the bill. I did break it, after all."

No one spoke. Not for a long time. President Randolph and Thames stared at the Doctor, their faces draining of any pretense. The Doctor stared back, his own façade of coolness coming apart as his temper boiled beneath the surface. His gaze was aimed so sharply at the council members it could easily have cut through them. No one was pretending anymore, the council's deepest, darkest secret was out in the open.

"Now you listen here, Doctor," Randolph started.

"How long did you wait?" the Doctor cut him off. His tone was casual, and yet Oli saw the hands held behind his back shaking violently. "How many other last-resorts did you consider? Before you just decided to round people up, and - "

"Those people were murderers!" spat the President. "They were killers! Thieves, and criminals. They were all already serving life sentences."

"And they still are!" the Doctor countered. "Sentenced, every second of every day, to a life of unbearable pain and suffering and an urge to kill they just can't satisfy."

The President shook his head, he didn't want to hear it.

"We had to do something," he insisted. "The fee the man wanted was astronomical, if we didn't pay then our world - our people - would burn."

"Your people did burn!" the Doctor yelled, crossing the room towards the President. "It doesn't matter who they were or what they'd done, they were your people. They were living, breathing people. And you _burnt them!_ You boiled their bodies until their souls started to escape into the air, and you bottled them up to be sold it. And what's more, when the things that were left started climbing from their graves and gutting everything they saw, you didn't even call for help! You let the people you didn't burn be mauled by those you did, because you didn't want to risk any outside authority clocking on to what you'd done."

Randolph's mouth dangled open pointlessly. There was nothing to say. He dropped his gaze to the floor. The red glare of the sunset revealed every guilt-ridden sleepless night in the wrinkles on his face. Beside him, Thames glared at the Doctor.

"It is rather easy to present yourself as holier-than-thou from your high horse, Doctor," he snarled. "These are the facts: the needs of the many outweighed the needs of the few. We did what was necessary to save as many of our citizens as we could. That's what Governments are for, they make the difficult choices for the greater good. If the Shadow Proclamation considers that a crime then you are even more naive than I always assumed."

The Doctor smirked.

"Sorry to disappoint, Thames. But I'm not from the Shadow Proclamation, so I won't be arresting you this evening. You'll have to face some other folks for your crime. Around two hundred of them."

The Doctor reached into his inside pocket and removed the small radiohe'd swiped from the compound.

Outside, the festivities had stopped. The TARDIS doors were open and Ryan, along with every single person in the town square, had just listened to the council's confession being blasted out of the console speakers. He turned to look at the crowd of people, who stared at the council building in stunned silence. He saw their expressions start to change.

"Oh, boy…" Ryan muttered.

"_Murderers!_" was the first shout.

It cut through the quiet like a blade, and was soon followed by similar cries, until suddenly the elated crowd had become an angry mob. And more than that, a mob on the move. The throng of two hundred plus charged forward as one. The men on guard outside the doors to the council building were easily overpowered and tossed aside, and the flimsy wooden doors fell apart under the force of so many marching through them.

"That's not good," said Ryan, running after them.

Except they were already coming out - along with three others. Randolph, Thames and Oli had been hauled out of the office, dragged out of the doors and thrown onto the sickly yellow soil.

Ryan had seen many scary things in his short time with the Doctor. But this, he thought, this was scaring him. The people circled around the three council members, violently throwing Thames and Randolph back when they tried to make a run for it, while Oli simply stood and quivered, looking as frightened as anyone Ryan had ever seen. He and the President were screaming for the crowd to calm down, to have mercy. But the mob were running on a dangerous mixture grief and fury, and they wanted revenge. Thames knew what was coming; Ryan watched him give up any escape attempts, electing instead to stand still and await his fate, defiant.

Ryan spotted Gallagher at the edge of the circle, and he ran to his side.

"Gallagher, that's enough," he said. "Tell them to stop. They'll listen to you."

"Enough?" Gallagher seethed. "Enough? They kill thousands and then sit idly by while their undead corpses run riot? We won't stop until they've gotten exactly what they deserve!"

The Doctor emerged from the council building. From the ruined doorway he crossed his arms across his chest and, Ryan was confused to see, made no move to put a stop to the madness.

Ryan rushed over to him.

"Doctor, this is getting out of hand."

"It got out of hand the moment the council decided to build ovens to burn the emotions out of their own people," the Doctor replied. "They've dug their own graves, Ryan, and now they'll have to lie in them."

Ryan looked at him like they'd never met.

"Who the hell do you think you are?" he asked in disbelief. "You don't get to decide that. No one does."

He dug his hands into the Doctor's jacket and scooped out his sonic screwdriver. Before the Doctor could utter a word of protest, Ryan had thrust the sonic into the air and thumbed the button. It unleashed an unbearably high-pitched noise that brought everything to a standstill. The mob jumped away from the council members, and turned to see what had made such a horrible sound.

Ryan turned back to the Doctor, glaring intensely.

"You're the one who taught me: there are no excuses. Killing is killing. There isn't anything that makes it okay. So do something!"

The Doctor looked to the crowd, huddled around the bruised and bleeding council members like a pack of dogs. Without another thought, he grabbed his sonic back from Ryan, and walked right into the centre of the crowd. The President was lying on the floor, nursing a cut lip with the back of his hand.

"Get up," said the Doctor.

He pulled Randolph to his feet, then dragged a sneering Thames and a scared-stiff Oli so they were standing right next to him. Then, he turned back to the mob, who were watching impatiently.

"I know how you feel. If you believe anything I tell you, believe that. Because I've felt it on far too many occasions. I know the anger that builds up inside you. I know the urge to make those responsible pay. And I know how it can almost take you over. But you can't let it. This, what you're about to do, is not the answer. Killing these men will not make things right. They need to be brought to justice, but not like this."

"Justice?" said a voice. Someone pushed their way to the front of the group. It was Dempsey, with his brother at his side and staring furiously at the Doctor. "You're going to tell me there's any other type of justice that these murderers deserve than death? After what they've done?"

"I know what you're going through, Dempsey, I've seen it before. Too many times. I'm sick of seeing it. And every time I do it gets harder and harder to remember - what makes us different from people like this, what makes us _better_, is that we don't sink to their levels." He looked to Ryan solemnly. "Sometimes you need people to remind you of that. We have the ability to show mercy, like they never did."

"Mercy?" Dempsey exclaimed.

The people were growing unruly again. The Doctor again placed himself between them and the council, ready to protect them should he have to. But just in time, there came a helping hand.

"He's right," said Gallagher. He also pushed through to the front. He and the Doctor shared a look of understanding, and then Gallagher turned to the people. "No more murders."

"But Gallagher - " Dempsey cried.

"But nothing! They're the executioners, not us. If we're going to try and make this world a decent place to live again, then we have to choose what kind of people we'll be right now. I want no part in a society that takes lives." He glanced to the council in disgust. "No matter what they've done."

He turned back to the crowd and waited for their decision. The people stared at each other undecidedly. The desire to see the council pay was rife, yet Gallagher's opinion was rated highly. The crucial moment, though, was when Dempsey gave the council a look of pure abhorrence, spat at them, but turned away. He took his brother's arm and walking away from the crowd. The people watched, then did the same.

The Doctor breathed a sigh of relief.

"Thank you," he said to Gallagher.

A ghost of a smirk appeared on Gallagher's face.

"I think this makes us even," he replied. He reached out and shook the Doctor's hand. Then he looked to the council again, and his tone turned dark. "Take them. Dump them in the Poison Star, for all I care. Just get them off this world before we do something we regret."

Gallagher walked away, giving Ryan a final pat on the shoulder as he passed. When Ryan walked over, the Doctor attempted to meet his gaze, but found it aimed decidedly away from him.

"Where do we take them?" Ryan asked..

At the question, Randolph and Thames looked to the Doctor fearfully. The Doctor let their minds run wild for a long few seconds, before grabbing them by the elbows and shoving them towards the TARDIS.

"The Shadow Proclamation. You can be their problem."

"I didn't know," said Oli in the tiniest of voices. It was the first time he'd spoken since they'd been dragged out of their own office. He was still white as a sheet, and he looked at the Doctor with big, tearful eyes. "I didn't know," he said again.

"I'm sure you didn't," said the Doctor dryly.

"No," said Randolph as they reached the police box. "He's telling the truth. Oli wasn't even with the council when we made the call." He brought his gaze to the younger man. "He was better than us. And I'm sorry, son."

Oli said nothing, and the council members stepped into the box in silence. The Doctor felt Ryan's eyes burning into the back of his. He couldn't bring himself to turn around, but it didn't matter. Ryan made his thoughts known anyway.

"So Oli didn't know a thing. Good job you didn't let them kill him then, eh Doctor?"

* * *

The council were handed over to pay for their crimes. The people of Canatre went about rebuilding their world. The Nothing lay suffocated and finally at peace underneath the remains of the crypt.

In the TARDIS, the ship's engines groaned as they worked. Bits and bobs on the console flashed and beeped. The floor rumbled slightly as it always did whilst in flight, while the time rotor wheezed lazily on its endless journey up and down inside the central column.

And yet the time machine had never felt so quiet.

Ryan sat on the railings, his back to the console as he stared deep into the lower levels of the TARDIS. The Doctor busied himself at controls, doing so until he ran out of levers to pull, and decided to speak.

"Ryan, I know how it must be - "

"Don't," was Ryan's instant reply. "Just don't."

The Doctor looked at him, or rather at his back, thinking about taking a few steps closer, but unsure how Ryan would react.

"I'm sorry I wasn't there," he decided to say. "I should've been."

Ryan gave a small, cynical laugh. "Why? You couldn't have saved him."

"No," the Doctor agreed. "But you shouldn't have been alone. I should have told you, how dangerous this life can be, should have prepared you for -"

"No," said Ryan sharply. "You told me how dangerous it would be. A few times." He finally turned around to look at the Doctor. "But you always said it about _me_. My life. Not anybody else's. You never said anything about watching other people die. And not just die; be murdered."

The Doctor just looked at him. Ryan's eyes were tired, and hurt, and more haunted than a seventeen year old boy's should ever be. And nothing the Doctor said would change that.

Ryan watched him, almost daring him to spout some grand Doctor-ism or improvise an uplifting speech. But when the Doctor said nothing, Ryan shook his head bitterly, and turned away again.

The Doctor sighed sadly. He briefly fiddled with the controls again, before giving up and walking towards the stairs that led out of the console room.

"I'll give you some time," he said.

"Doctor, wait," Ryan stopped him.

The Doctor turned back. Ryan swung his legs over the railings to be facing him, though his gaze was very firmly aimed at the floor.

"This is too much," he murmured. "It's not what I thought it would be, and I don't know if I'm strong enough." He swallowed hesitantly, then looked at the Doctor. "I want to go home."

* * *

_End of Episode Three_

* * *

**_Next Time..._**

Ryan's had enough, and he wants to go home. Except going home will only lead him into his most dangerous adventure yet.

While Ryan takes some time alone to ponder his future in the TARDIS, the Doctor finds himself investigating strange goings-on around town. The local school is shut down on results day, overtaken by a mysterious government-led science organisation. The scientists think they're trying to fix the world, but unbeknownst to them they're being manipulated into playing with forces they can't control.

It's up to the Doctor to shut the science project down before it destroys the Earth - the only question is: will Ryan be fighting with him, or against him?


End file.
